


The Devil Went Down to Starbucks

by EeveeNicks



Category: Christian Tradition Lore & Folklore, Mythology, Paradise Lost - John Milton
Genre: 2020, Alternate Universe - Angels Are Known, Angels, Coffee Shop, Fallen Angels, Gen, Occult, Satan gets stuck being a guardian angel, Satan is not happy about this, Serial Killers, Seriously this is a coffee shop fix based partially on Paradise Lost, Takes place during the pandemic, The Devil is also real, This is what I did with my classical literature degree, When the archangel Michael shows up and asks you to babysit Satan while he's at work, angels are real but don't think too hard about any theological implications, quarantine fairy tale, social distancing, that's basically what happens, the immortals are bored, too many hours playing animal crossing new horizons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28334106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EeveeNicks/pseuds/EeveeNicks
Summary: 2020 has been one hell of a year for fledgling journalist Bailey who has been riding it out alone in a tiny apartment. It gets weirder when the murders begin in her sleepy little town, and Bailey becomes a potential target.Satan has apparently opened a coffee shop for some reason. He hates having customers, but when a serial killer comes to town posing as him, he decides to hunt them down. Michael and Satan have worked out their differences and spend more time playing DnD these days than fighting each other. Bored with quarantining, the unwitting journalist wanders into their strange world.Do angels make good quarantine buddies? Probably better than Roombas, at least. And hopefully better than sinking another 200 hours into Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Relationships: Lilith/Lucifer
Kudos: 8





	1. A New Appreciation for Rear Window

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: I don't know why I decided to write a bunch of silly stories about Satan, but I did. It's been pretty fun. This is basically just something I've been scribbling into MS Word for the past few months off and on to deal with the quarantine blues. It's a 2020 social distancing adventure! Social distance with Satan! And a very strange coffee shop. And some angels.
> 
> Uh... I guess content warning if mentions of the pandemic bother you because this story takes place during it. Part of the premise being that if you can't be around other humans, supernatural creatures are your next best option. Basically it's similar to all of those jokes about summoning a demon to keep you company during the pandemic.
> 
> I have 5 or 6 chapters of this so far. I'll try to post one once a week. After that, I'll just post them as I write them.
> 
> Yes, these are the same characters and universe from my "Christmas Letters to Satan" story.

**"The Devil Went Down to Starbucks"**

**a.k.a "The First Rule of Angel Club"**

**a.k.a. "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Murder Hornets"**

* * *

**Chapter 1: A New Appreciation for Rear Window**

Greendale Heights wasn't the most bustling part of town during the day, let alone at night when people in the quiet suburban neighborhood all seemed to be home with the lights out by ten. It was a nice place to live, albeit a fairly boring one. Modest houses on cul-de-sacs, a few spruced up old strip malls, a main road with lights, benches, and a sort of mid-century-middle-America charm in spite of all the very modern people with their very modern conveniences.

Given that it was a neighborhood consisting mostly of single-family homes, apartments were scarce. The only exception was the slightly rundown looking area over by the train tracks. It was the kind of place young and potentially-but-not-yet upwardly mobile professionals from elsewhere lived and commuted to work in places teeming with jobs in businesses that hadn't been owned by the same families for fifty years. The rent was cheap. The streets were clean. And it was convenient enough that one could spend whole days at a time in the nearby city and never have to deal with the tedium of living on the outskirts of a town that looked like it could be on a 1950's greeting card.

But it wasn't the 1950's. It was 2020, and for the past month, the normally sleepy town seemed like it had actually been completely asleep. No one left their homes. Businesses were all shuttered. Everyone was inside trying their best to ride out the worst of the pandemic, and that meant there was usually chilling lack of life in the world outside.

So, it was all the more unusual when, one rainy night at 3 a.m., Rebecca Bailey trudged over to close her bedroom window so she could finally turn in for the night, only to spot the lights on in a shop across the way. A fledgling journalist, Bailey had been up long into the night working on an article she planned to read over a couple more times in the morning before submitting it for review. She was a lightly tan woman around thirty or so with chestnut brown hair and bright green eyes. Half asleep and still dressed in her beat-up flannel shirt and jeans, she stumbled over to the cheap mattress pad on the floor of her one-room apartment and kicked it over to the window so she could look out at the goings-on below.

It was pouring rain, but she could make out that the lights were on at the small coffee shop across the way. It wasn't a standalone unit but part of a row of attached stores, all the rest of which were closed up for the night. It had a battered blue wooden sign in the front proudly sporting the name "Bringer Brews" in faded gold letters. Bailey had been in the shop a time or two when she had first moved into her second story apartment in the old building. She had remembered the coffee being good, but the place had lacked atmosphere. It looked like it hadn't been updated since the 80's. Bright red plastic-topped steel tables with matching chairs, a counter top that looked like something out of a diner from the 50's, and a circle of oversized chairs and a couch that looked like the owner of the place had hastily thrown together something to imitate Friends back when it had first come on TV.

It wasn't a place anyone ever really seemed to hang out at, leaving Bailey to often wonder how it managed to stay open all these years given that it was apparently older than she was. There only seemed to be one person ever working there, a woman with long black hair who Bailey guessed was probably in her late 30s. But now, at three in the morning on a Wednesday, the shop was lit up inside, though the neon "Open" sign was still off, leading Bailey to believe that perhaps the shop owner was entertaining some company privately.

Which still just seemed weird.

Sometimes she wondered if her newfound pandemic work-from-home lifestyle was turning her into Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, but it wasn't like she had anything better to do. She turned off the lights to her drab half-moved-in-half-in-boxes studio and knelt on the disheveled mattress to get a better view of the people in the coffee shop. Looked like two men and one woman, the shopkeeper herself nowhere in view. It took Bailey a moment, but she recognized one of the people. He was a young black man of average height, probably also in his 30s. Short hair, round almost boyish face, clean shaven, muscular build, cute from the right angles but aloof whenever Bailey had run into him on her way home from work. He was one of the few people she had seen go in and out of the coffee shop on multiple occasions. She'd seen him through the window sitting at the counter stools and talking to the owner.

The other two people, she didn't recognize. One was a tall white woman with freckles and loosely curled red hair down to her waist. She looked like she could have been a model, though her fashion sense was drab and almost Puritan-looking. A heavy black skirt went down to her ankles while her top was completely covered by a long-sleeved white shirt that buttoned all the way up to her throat. Bailey was certain the woman couldn't be comfortable in it. The man beside her was dressed similarly, though he was wearing black pants rather than a skirt. He was even taller than she was and had long-ish blonde hair that barely touched his shoulders and a neatly trimmed beard to match. There was something almost rugged about him despite his modest dress, and Bailey thought he was very attractive. Almost looked like a Viking. She wondered idly if he and the woman were a couple.

Bailey flopped backwards onto her mattress, her head hitting the pillow as her back landed on the case with her wireless earbuds.  
"Damn," she muttered, grabbing it out from underneath herself and setting it on the wood floor beside her with her tablet. She briefly considered watching a video or something to help her get to sleep, though she just wasn't in the mood for it that night.

As she listened to the sounds of the heavy rain, she found her mind wandering back to the people at the old coffee shop across the way. It didn't look like a drug deal given that the lights were all on and it was easy to see everyone through the transparent storefront. If they were friends, it was still an odd place to meet up at that hour of the night. A writer by profession, her mind was always coming up with bizarre and fanciful ideas about the mundane. She couldn't help it. It was just how she was wired.

But as far as her theories about the coffee shop went, nothing really made sense if she thought too hard about it so Bailey decided to just assume they were members of some strange witch coven or something. The thought amused her, and she pondered on it for a while longer before falling into a dead sleep. She was exhausted.

* * *

Bailey called in sick to work the next day. She figured between the nearly eighteen hours she had spent on the article combined with not getting to bed until three, she had done more than enough for her publisher for a couple of days. Besides, she had gotten the article in on time and it wasn't like she had ever really missed work before. After a little more sleep, she woke up again and rolled off the mattress feeling like she had been hit by a truck. Apparently, all of those hours the day before sitting on the floor hunched over a laptop on a makeshift table made from a cardboard box hadn't been the best thing in the world for her back. She stretched and showered and then threw on some jeans and a flannel shirt before leaving her apartment and going down the stairs to get outside.

It was a dreary humid morning with an unpleasant chill in the air, some of that chill that sometimes lingered into April. Bailey hugged her flannel tight around herself as she walked down the street, wishing she had thought to check her weather app beforehand and bring a coat. She figured it would be all right though because she didn't plan to be outside long.

It was well past what would have been the morning rush before the world had closed down. She knew she probably shouldn't have gone in anywhere, but she was going stir-crazy just being in her house all the time. She figured it probably wouldn't hurt to pop into one of the nearby places and get breakfast to go since some places were at least still open in that capacity. Maybe she could justify it by telling herself she was supporting local business or something.

Of course, the strange meeting at the coffee shop was still on her mind, and though she knew she was being ridiculous, Bailey decided to head over there and get a bite to eat or at the very least a hot cup of coffee to get the chill out of her bones. Bringer Brews wasn't much to look at, but at least it was always clean and had pretty good coffee. Plus, the world was just so strange these days that very few things could be considered truly ridiculous anymore.

As Bailey entered the shop, a bell rang, and she looked up to notice that there was an actual bell tied to the door. Stepping through the entryway really did feel like going back in time. What with the scuffed-up linoleum floor that was trying to look like red and black tiles and the bright red tables, it reminded Bailey of what some places had looked like back in the early 90s when she had been a small child. The place smelled like a mixture of coffee and the way newspapers had smelled almost thirty years ago. There was something soothing about it all, and she found herself wondering why she hadn't frequented this place more often in the year she had been living in the building just across the street. Going back in time had a hell of a lot of appeal these days.

She was just about to take a seat at the counter and put in a to-go order when she noticed she wasn't the only patron there. One of the people from the night before, the young black man she had recognized from around town, was seated at the counter as well, hunched over his coffee and talking with the waitress in hushed tones. They both went quiet as soon as Bailey came over and took a seat down on the far end from where he was seated. The waitress took one look at her and, rather than taking her order, turned and walked into the back. The woman had actually seemed surprised that she had a customer.

Bailey suddenly felt very awkward as she sat there on her stool, wondering what that had been all about. Her thoughts were starting to shift from thinking this was some sort of cool witch cult to seriously wondering if she had just walked into a place that was a front for some kind of money laundering scheme.

"Don't mind her," the man at the counter said with a pleasant laugh as he looked over to Bailey. "She makes a damn fine cup of coffee but her customer service skills are severely lacking sometimes."

"No, it's okay," Bailey said, still feeling a little awkward. "I'm sorry if I interrupted whatever conversation you were in the middle of."

The man just waved away her concern. "It's totally fine. It wasn't anything important. Just talking about everything going on in the news. I'm Mike, by the way."

He held out a hand to her, and Bailey shook it.

"Bailey. Well... Rebecca. But I just go by Bailey."

"Bailey it is then," he said with a genuinely warm grin. Then he turned to looked behind the counter and called out with a good-natured laugh. "Hey it's okay, get out here. She doesn't bite."

"I'm coming. I'm coming," the waitress said with her annoyance barely hidden. She looked over at Bailey. "Sorry about that. Long night. Can I get you anything?"

The waitress was a lightly olive-toned woman of about average height. She was actually fairly attractive up close, even if she looked a little harried at the moment. She had a red apron on over a red sweater and black jeans. Her long black hair that stretched down to her waist was pinned back in an almost careless manner, and her square-framed glasses made her eyes look even bigger than they already were. And they were certainly striking eyes. Amber gold. Almost unnaturally so. Like a wolf. Bailey's writer brain lingered for a moment on the unusual description. Perhaps the month-long deprivation of social contact was getting to her so far and she was living far too deep in her own head these days, but she decided that the waitress definitely had eyes like a wolf and made a mental note to add the words "werewolf coffee shop" story to her brainstorming journal later.

Now that Bailey was thinking about it, all four of the people she had seen at this place since the night before had been incredibly good looking, even Wolf Eyes herself.

"I'll just take a medium coffee," Bailey said. "Milk, no sugar."

The waitress smirked a bit. "This isn't Starbucks, kid. We've only got one size of coffee."

"Then I'll take that one I guess."

"Good choice." She turned and pointed to the pot of coffee and stack of cups on the counter behind her. "Go get it."

Bailey stared at the waitress expectantly until she realized that she was serious.

"You want me to go back there and get the coffee myself?" Bailey asked, much to the annoyance of Wolf Eyes.

"What do I look like? Your servant?"

Bailey was about to reply that she looked like a server and that customers generally didn't go behind the counter and pour their own drinks, but she decided not to argue. She just got up, walked behind the counter, and grabbed a Styrofoam cup and took one of the coffee pots off of its heater and poured some coffee for herself.. She then put it back on the heater with a steamy bubbling hiss that filled the air with an even more intense scent of the fresh brewed coffee. Then she poured some milk into it, put a lid on it, and walked back to her seat.

"Dollar-fifty," the waitress said.

Bailey looked over to the old manual cash register and figured that was a good sign they probably didn't accept Apple Pay. Then again, the place didn't even seem to have a credit card reader. Thankfully she had two dollars in the pocket of her jeans, which she pulled out and set on the counter.

"Keep the change," she said as she watched Wolf Eyes bypass the cash register and pocket the cash.

"Thanks."

As the woman left, Bailey sipped her coffee and turned to a stack of newspapers at the end of the counter. She picked one up and pulled it closer, figuring maybe she'd read the paper for what was probably the first time in the past decade. She was so used to getting the news on her phone now. It only took a quick glance the cover story though to make her realize why the waitress and Mike had been speaking in such hushed tones about it. For the first time in weeks, the headline wasn't dominated by news of the pandemic or economic shutdown. Apparently, a body had been found. Deep in the woods of the local nature preserve.

It was the body of a young man, probably one of the local college-age kids, and it had been defaced with occult symbols carved into the flesh. Bailey thought she was going to be sick as she looked at the graphic imagery in the newspaper photos. Though they had covered up the worst of it, her mind was still putting a pretty horrific picture together based on the words of the article combined with the images they did show.

"It's all very unfortunate," Wolf Eyes said, her back turned to her patrons.

"They're saying it's the work of Satanic cultists," Mike said, looking over at Bailey.

With everything going on so far this year, Bailey had all but forgotten about the incident similar to this one that had happened back in January. Her heart skipped a beat as she kept reading and saw that the preliminary medical examination found that the time of death had likely been around two in the morning. Now she was really hoping that whatever the late-night meeting in this shop had been, that it had just been some money laundering scandal. The witch cult idea suddenly seemed a lot less cool.

"It's bizarre," Bailey said, suddenly unwilling to look up at the man in front of her. "Just really bizarre. Kind of thing that would turn a small town like this on its head given most people here have known each other forever."

"Kind of thing that will cast suspicion on any of the rest of us who didn't grow up here," Mike said, his voice deeper and grim.

"I don't know why these idiots think 'Satan' wants human sacrifices," the waitress huffed as she began sweeping up behind the counter. "Like there aren't enough damned souls in Hell. What does he need another one for?"

"Actually," Bailey said, wondering if she should just shut her mouth and get out of the shop right then, "Most Satanists don't really believe in Satan. I mean, I'm sure some of them do but… I've written about it. They like the idea of Satan as a free-thinking archetype rather than the Christian Boogey-man."

The waitress glared at Bailey looking like she had just been slapped across the face.

"Did you really just try to explain Satanism to—"

Mike suddenly reached out and grabbed one of the waitress's hands. It seemed to calm her down, at least momentarily, because she no longer looked like she wanted to deck Bailey across the face.

"I'm sorry," Bailey said, not sure if she had just insulted a couple of Satanists or if maybe the waitress had been really Christian or something and didn't appreciate anyone referring to the Devil so flippantly. "I didn't mean to offend. I've just interviewed some people from a couple of the Satanic churches over in the city. No one seemed to be a real believer, but I guess I can see how not all Satanists are cut from the same cloth."

She had no idea what she was saying anymore. Alarm bells were going off in her head. Between seeing Mike and the two strange people in this building around the time the murder had taken place, the waitress's supposed "long night," and now her reaction, Bailey was starting to get a really bad feeling about these people.

"No," Mike said suddenly, releasing the waitress's hand. "We apologize. It's a disturbing piece of news, and you are right about most Satanists. She's just had a few run-ins with some less pleasant ones over the years."

"I'm not a fan," the woman said flatly, pouring a cup of coffee that was, presumably, for herself.

"We knew the victim," Mike said. "We got a call last night very late that the police had gone to investigate a commotion in the woods and found him at what looked like some kind of ceremonial site."

"He was still alive," the waitress said. "Still alive for ten minutes when they found him." She shook her head tiredly. "Distant relation, but I was the next of kin and apparently the emergency contact in his phone."

Bailey suddenly fell a knot forming in her stomach. She just felt awful now for coming up with all sorts of crazy ideas and speculating about these people for her own amusement the night before. Witch cults, money laundering, werewolf coffee houses, all of her ridiculous fantasy scenarios… it had just been some poor woman getting a call that someone in her family had died. Mike and the others had probably come by to comfort her.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," Bailey said, at a loss for any less clichéd words. Hallmark didn't make cards for the families of victims of ritual sacrifice.

"It wasn't that big of a deal," the woman replied, taking a long sip of her own coffee. For all that she claimed it wasn't a big deal, she still looked kind of shaken by it. "Just a distant cousin I barely knew."

Bailey had a feeling that wasn't the case if he had her saved as the emergency contact in his phone, but she didn't say anything. She was already feeling pretty bad about her earlier suspicions.

"Are you still serving breakfast?" she asked.

"All day," the woman replied. "We don't exactly do lunch or dinner."

"Bacon and eggs?"

"I'll fire up the grill." She turned and did just that before heading to the back to get her utensils. She probably hadn't expected to get any more customers that day and had shut it down early. Bailey once again wondered how this place stayed in business.

"I know I've seen you around here before," Bailey said, turning to Mike. "I live nearby."

Mike nodded. It seemed all he had was an empty coffee cup and half of a buttered roll left. "I'm here a lot."

"The coffee is surprisingly good." Bailey wasn't sure what else to say, and the coffee truly was incredible, which made it all the more surprising that even before the pandemic this place never seemed to have any customers. Then again, she still felt like there was something off about these people, even if she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

Mike laughed and shook his head before gesturing to where the waitress had disappeared to. "The coffee is good, but I mostly hang out here to see her. People around here are kind of close knit and not too fond of outsiders, especially now. She and I are kind of from the same neighborhood so she's just more comfortable to be around than most people."

"Ah, I see. Well, I really am sorry if I'm intruding. I'm just going to take my order to go anyway. You know, social distancing and all that." Bailey was pretty sure she wasn't supposed to be in there and sitting at the counter at all, though the place was so empty she figured there probably wasn't much harm in it.

Mike nodded, looking like it had slipped his mind for a bit and he was only just now being reminded of the pandemic orders.

"I'm actually kind of surprised this place is still open," Bailey continued. "But I guess if it can do takeout, then that makes sense."

Mike just looked at her curiously. "I'm actually not sure why Cici is keeping this place open."

The waitress came out of the kitchen, glaring at him from behind.

"Don't go calling me by your stupid nickname around the customer."

She seemed to quickly brush it off though and got to work on the bacon and eggs for Bailey.

"What does 'C. C.' stand for?" Bailey asked, finding her social filter was a bit more worn down than she had realized. Though, after having been as lonely as she had been the past few weeks, it made sense that she'd want to talk as much as she could to the first people she saw.

"It's not initials," the waitress said, quickening her pace like she wanted to get Bailey out of there as soon as possible.

Bailey decided not to inquire further. She just sat on her stool and drank her coffee as she looked around the outdated coffee shop. While normally she would have found a place like this rundown and off-putting, there was something strangely comforting about it right now. It was like an escape to a simpler time, a sheltered haven from the nightmare that was the present. And despite how run down she assumed it would be, it was actually in pretty good shape and meticulously clean. Between the smell of the fresh coffee and the old-timey décor, there was something about the place that just made Bailey feel peaceful and safe.

Of course, she would probably feel even better if Cici hadn't been so standoffish. The waitress put a Styrofoam container on the counter in front of Bailey.

"Here's your to-go order."

"Oh, thanks." Bailey slipped her a ten-dollar bill and the waitress gave her back the change. "It was nice meeting both of you."

Cici looked skeptical but Mike nodded, smiling.

"It was very nice to meet you, too, Bailey. I hope to see you around again."

Bailey got up and grabbed her food before heading for the door.

"Bye!" she called as she left, leaving Mike and Cici alone once more.


	2. Cloven Hoofbeats and Horses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In chapter 2, we get to meet none other than the devil themself! Satan has arrived and he is pissed. 
> 
> I've appreciated the comments I've gotten so far on this and the Christmas story... although most of it was talking about my Metroid fiction. I'm glad people enjoy that (truly), but it might be better to leave comments/reviews like that on the Metroid stories themselves. (Yes, I still check after all these years lol)
> 
> I understand that a weird Paradise Lost sequel that takes place in 2020 isn't everyone's cup of tea and it's a HUGE departure from my Metroid stuff, but I do hope that if anyone decides to read it, they get at least a little amusement out of it or find my little piece of escapism about these trying times relatable.

Chapter 2: Cloven Hoofbeats and Horses

Bailey wasn’t sure what happened the rest of the day after she had left the coffee house. All she knew was that she had eaten lunch once or twice, sat on her mattress and played a few hours of Animal Crossing, napped, and then it was dark. When she woke up from the nap, she couldn’t remember if it was morning or evening or what day of the week it even was until a glance at her phone informed her that it was a quarter past eight in the evening.

She sat up and stretched. It was too early to go to bed for real and too late to start doing anything else. She couldn’t help but feel she had wasted yet another day, but over a month into the shelter-in-place orders, she was already used to that sensation of days simultaneously dragging on forever but also disappearing right before her eyes.

Tonight was different, however. Bailey was really feeling the effects of the solitude and after talking with Mike and Cici in the coffeeshop, she realized it was the first time she had interacted with anyone in real life in over a month. Not only that, but it was the first time since then she had actually held a conversation with people that didn’t just turn into a discussion of the pandemic. And for some reason, Bailey was feeling a weird crash after the slight rush she had gotten from being around people again.

There was also a deep-seeded feeling of guilt and a little paranoia at having gone into the coffee shop at all, even if it was only to get something to go. Bailey was still trying to make sense of some of these feelings she had been having since the quarantine orders had begun, and she didn’t quite have the words to describe them yet, let alone understand them. All she knew was that she was anxious and restless and that if she didn’t get out of her apartment now, she was going to start climbing the walls and screaming. These nearly unbearable tangled-up feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and borderline hopelessness seemed to come in waves and this one was very much at its apex. It felt like her skin was crawling with tension.

At first, she tried getting back into her video game, but she found herself unable to focus on it. For some reason she wasn’t getting that comfortable numbness from building her virtual island paradise that she normally did. Trying the television wasn’t any better. As she turned it off in frustration, she laid back on the couch and stared at the ceiling for a while.

Going out to the coffee shop earlier that day really had messed up whatever this resignation was that she had developed to deal with quarantine. She had tasted a little bit of freedom and she wanted more, but she knew going out and trying to find more people to actually socialize with again was the least responsible thing she could have done.

There was an itch though, an itch she couldn’t scratch and it was making her almost jittery. She needed something, craved anything, just couldn’t stand looking at the white plaster walls and tiny half-unpacked apartment anymore. She felt like she was trapped in this box and just needed to get out, even if it wasn’t to go anywhere in particular, but she needed to get out. Her body was driving her to leave with all of its being, and she wondered vaguely if this was what people felt when they were starting to lose their minds, not that it would surprise her if that was precisely what was happening. She had been wondering when all of the stress and isolation would cause her to snap.

Bailey threw on the same pair of jeans she had been wearing earlier and a beat-up black windbreaker. She stuffed her keys, phone, and wallet into the pockets and bolted out of her apartment, not entirely sure where she was going. It was a bizarre feeling, just this burst of hyper impulsive energy, and she was fixated on it and wherever it wanted her to go. But really it just seemed to want her to get as far away from her apartment as possible, just keep going and not look back. Her thoughts were coming at a mile a minute and she wasn’t even sure what to do about it. Not like there was anywhere to go or anyone to see. At least if she was just walking around outside and away from people, she’d be safe while also satiating her need to get out and do literally anything.

She avoided the main roads, walking in circles around quiet blocks for close to an hour. Still, she couldn’t even fathom the idea of going back to her place for the night, not yet. She wanted to put it off as long as possible. To put off being trapped within those four walls again and to put off having to wake up early for work just so she could once again start working on another depressing article about hand sanitizer or something for her garbage online magazine. She picked up her pace and began walking farther and farther away from the main part of town and all of the residential homes.

By the time Bailey found herself at the edge of the woods, she was practically running. She only slowed down as she realized where she was and stopped as she reached the gate on the chain link fence that led into the nature preserve. Theoretically it had closed at dusk, and it was fully night now, but she doubted anyone was policing it. No one ever did during ordinary times. There was certainly no one there now.

The gate wasn’t even locked so she just let herself through. Since this wasn’t the main entrance to the preserve, there was no paved path, just some dirt hiking trails that were slippery with mud from the spring showers and the leftover dead leaves from the winter. Bailey walked carefully, trying not to slip. Most of the trees were still bare and gray, and there were a lot of large dead branches on the ground that had snapped off during the snow earlier in the year. Only a few were starting to bud, but it was too dark out to see any of the green. Bailey though it was creepy. The barren branches stretched like many interlocked skeletal fingers above her head and the bare bushes provided little cover from any eyes that may have been watching unseen. Bailey was very on edge about being a young woman walking alone in the woods at night, particularly nowadays when most people were sheltering at home and no one on the streets or on the hiking trails would hear if she screamed.

She shuddered. The air was damp, and that amplified the chill she felt down into her bones. The windbreaker was heavy and usually warm enough even for mild winter weather, but for some reason the deeper she walked into the forest, the more chilled she became. It didn’t deter her though. Bailey had finally figured out exactly what she was looking for, and she wasn’t about to stop until she found it. 

Wandering and searching for another hour, she knew it was long past the time she should have gone home to get ready for bed, but she had no interest in doing that, especially not after the nap she had taken earlier in the day. No, she was in no rush to get back to the life of a shut-in.

A bit of yellow police tape that had been caught in the bushes let her know when she was in the right place. It wasn’t a big clearing, but there were all sorts of footprints in it and a couple of cigarette butts that hadn’t gotten muddied up yet by rain. Considering the amount of rain they had had the day before the body was found in the woods, Bailey knew they must have been fresh and must have been left by the officers of that very investigation.

She tried to be as careful as she could as she creeped into the scene, being mindful of where she stepped. She figured if no one was here anymore and the police tape had been taken down, it was no longer an active crime scene.

This was the kind of stuff she wished she could cover with her journalism. Perhaps it was a bit morbid, but investigating and writing about grisly murders just seemed so much more interesting than celebrity responses to the toilet paper shortage. Bailey sighed as she looked around. Aside from the aforementioned footprints, tape, and cigarette butts, there wasn’t much evidence that this had been a crime scene at all. It just looked like a recently trampled part of the woods that a lot of people had congregated in. She found herself wondering which footprints belonged to the cops and which ones belonged to the alleged Satanists.

She heard a branch crack on one of the nearby trails and froze up as she looked around. It was dark, and she couldn’t see very far. All of the irregular shapes from the bare tree and bush branches didn’t help matters at all. She waited a while until it seemed like whatever had made the sound had passed. Her heart was racing, and she realized that perhaps rushing out into a recent crime scene in the middle of the woods was a bad idea. She had only been thinking about avoiding cops or anyone who might be infectious. She hadn’t even considered predatory animals or that the Satanists might return to the scene of the crime.

Being there was a bad idea. She needed to get out of the woods and back home, but as she looked around for the way she had come, she realized that she had gone in so many circles on her hike that she could no longer tell which direction would take her back out to the road and which direction would take her even deeper into the forest. There were no signs around here, and none of the trails looked more traveled than any of the others.

She thought about taking out her phone and trying to figure out which direction was which, but she worried that the light of the phone might give away her location if there really was anyone here and they hadn’t actually spotted her yet.

Bailey just picked a random path and got going. She cursed the slippery dead leaves and roots beneath her feet since she couldn’t afford to speed up at all without the risk of tripping and falling and making an even louder noise or potentially injuring herself and not being able to get out of the woods. She looked back a couple of times as she went, but she didn’t see anything. After a while she slowed down, figuring it was much more likely that whatever she heard had been a deer or something.

 _If you hear hoofbeats, think horses,_ she thought to herself as she looked around one more time and pulled out her phone. At this point she was completely lost and opened her map to get a vague idea of where she was. She figured she could use the compass app to figure out which way was north or whichever direction she needed to head in.

The GPS hadn’t even finished pinpointing her location when there was the sound of another branch snapping, and Bailey looked up instantly, her eyes wide. There, barely six feet in front of her, stood a tall figure in a dark gray robe. His face was obscured by the hood and the darkness.

“Are you looking for something?” he asked in a fake-friendly voice as he took a step forward and Bailey took a step back, “or just snooping around where you don’t belong?”

“I…” Bailey felt like she had something in her throat. She couldn’t speak. She could barely breathe. Her heart was racing a million miles an hour and she couldn’t remember the last time she had been so scared as the man took yet another step closer to her. “I… I was just out for a walk…”

“This deep in the woods? Didn’t you hear about what happened here, girl?”

“I—”

She couldn’t get the words out because she was suddenly grabbed from behind by two other figures, both wearing the same robes. They each took an arm and held her back as the first man continued to approach. Bailey tried to thrash and throw them off of her, flailing wildly and trying to get free by any means necessary, but it was to no avail. She screamed her loudest bloody murder scream, but there was no one around for at least a mile. Only the trees and the animals heard her plea.

The first man, the one now standing not three feet away from her, pulled out an ornate silver dagger and held it up to Bailey’s face. She tried to scream again, but the first time had already strained her vocal cords. All that came out was a small strangled sound.

“P-please don’t kill me,” she begged, a last-ditch attempt to get them to let her go. She knew it was futile, but it was all she could do now.

All that happened, however, was that the cloaked man held the dagger even closer to her face, breaking the skin enough to bleed.

“We didn’t get to complete last night’s ritual,” he said. “And our Dark Lord demands more blood. So scream and struggle all you want, but Lord Satan himself came to me and demanded a sacrifice, and I refuse to disappoint him.”

“I asked no such thing,” a deep voice suddenly boomed, and this time even the hooded men were looking around nervously as Bailey desperately scanned the area.

“Help me!” she called out to whoever was there, desperately hoping that it wasn’t some other homicidal psychopath. “They’re trying to kill me!”

“I do not demand the blood of the innocent,” the voice boomed as a new figure came into view. Whatever it was, it was far too tall to be a human, though it was similarly silhouetted. Aside from its height, however, the horns and barbed reptilian tail gave away that this clearly wasn’t a human. “I am a punisher of the wicked!”

The men suddenly looked like they were about to wet themselves, and one actually did as they all threw themselves on the ground, bowing before their supposed deity. Though she was free, Bailey could only stand and watch the scene before her in horror and disbelief.

“Lord Satan,” the first man said, sounding far more like a cowering puppy than the man who had held a blade to Bailey’s face only moments before, “we did not mean you any disrespect. We are but your humble servants and—”

Before the man could finish his sentence, each of the hooded figures suddenly burst into flames right before Bailey’s eyes. But these were no ordinary flames. They were white. White flames with violet centers. And as they burned the men alive, consuming them faster than any earthly fire, they left everything around them untouched. Bailey couldn’t even feel any heat coming from the flames, but within seconds the men were reduced to nothing but charred husks at her feet. Even though they were silent now, their death wails continued to echo through her mind to the point where she wasn’t sure how much of it was real and how much was just in her head.

She felt like she was in a dream, and it felt like hours before she was able to tear her eyes from the corpses and look up to whatever the being was that had just slaughtered three men before her eyes without even touching them.

The winged and horned creature just stared back at her through golden eyes that could have been those of a human. Its entire body was gray and dragon-like, an unsettling cross between man and beast. His legs were like those of a goat, ending in large cloven hooves. Bailey had no words as she just fell down to her hands and knees, feeling like she was going to vomit from fear. Why the creature hadn’t killed her yet, she had no idea.

“Please don’t kill me,” she murmured, unable to move. “I’m not one of them.”

“I know,” the creature said in a much gentler, much more human sounding voice.

Bailey looked up to see that it had extended a clawed hand to help her up. She stared at it for a long time but eventually took it against her better judgment. The creature helped pull her to her feet. There was a marked change in its demeanor.

“I apologize for the theatrics,” the horned being said. “The stupid devil caricature form just seemed appropriate. I swear I’m normally far better looking than that thing. I needed to find some way to amuse myself in this mess. I simply despise those who commit acts of evil in my name, and well… I do sort of enjoy seeing people like that grovel and beg for their lives.”

“I… um…” Bailey wasn’t sure if she felt more scared at this point or straight up confused. The shift in the being’s demeanor was extreme enough and abrupt enough that it really threw her for a loop. “So… does this mean that you’re Satan?”

“That’s one word for it,” the being muttered before suddenly shifting into a new form.

Where the dragon beast had once stood before Bailey now stood a surprisingly petite, somewhat androgynous man. His complexion was of a middle olive tone, and he had long black hair down to his waist and stared at Bailey through the same golden eyes the creature had possessed. His clothes were unremarkable, just black slacks and a red long-sleeved button-up, but there was something strangely attractive about the way he pulled off the ensemble. He was smiling slightly, a devilish smirk, but it managed to set Baily a little more at ease. The man looked like he could have been an angel.

Except for the big black horns that were still on his head. They were thick and curved slightly like those of a goat. He still had the barbed reptilian tail, which now seemed to be twitching curiously as he studied her.

Bailey’s mouth was dry, and she was having a hard time forming words. Her mind was somehow simultaneously blank and racing. She had so many questions. She wanted to ask why he had rescued her if he was the Devil, but she couldn’t find the right words.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked instead.

The being called Satan chuckled slightly. He looked amused by her terror.

“I have no reason to kill you at the moment. I was only here for those three and any others from their cult who might show up. I was hoping not to reveal myself to a human, but I think if I had delayed a moment longer we would have ended up with a higher body count.”

He had a nice voice, smooth but not too deep. Surprisingly feminine. There was a certain charm to the way he spoke and a pleasant cadence.

“What are you planning to do to me?” Bailey asked, pretty sure that trying to outrun the actual Satan wouldn’t go so well for her. If that was even who he truly was. Not that she had any reason to doubt he was who he claimed to be.

Satan shrugged.

“I’m not planning on doing anything. I don’t really care about what happens to you. Like I said, I just dislike when people commit acts of evil in my name. Your death just seemed unnecessary.”

The Devil’s words were cold, but Bailey wasn’t offended. She was actually a little glad he didn’t seem to care what happened to her. Maybe she actually did stand a chance of escaping.

“So, am I free to just go?” she asked.

“If you wish,” he said. “I doubt you really want to be the only one around when someone inevitably stumbles across three dead bodies, especially when the only explanation you would have is that the Devil did it.”

The Devil had made a very good point.

“Right… I’m going to get going then,” she said feeling awkward.

Was she supposed to thank him? Say good bye? Tell him to have a good night? He was the Devil. The whole situation had taken a sharp turn from terrifying beyond belief to just straight up surreal.

“Thank you, um… Satan,” she finally said after debating for a moment about what to say.

“Please, just call me Lucifer. All of my non-existent friends do.”

Bailey wondered what it said about her that she was now apparently on a first name basis with the Devil himself.

“Right well, good night… _Lucifer_. It was very nice meeting you... sort of.”

“Wish it had been under better circumstances. Now hurry home, Rebecca Bailey, and hopefully we’ll never have to see each other again.”

Bailey’s skin crawled when he said her name, and things went from being surreal back to being terrifying. Her eyes widened in horror once again as she looked at him, just smiling his smug smile at her, but this time she wasn’t frozen in fear. She took off running, leaves and tree roots be damned. She didn’t care if she was running further into the forest or if she was running out of it. She just ran like her life depended on it.


	3. The First Rule of Angel Club

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure how many people are reading this, but I have no excuse for not posting this sooner. It's not like I don't have the story written out already. I just straight up forgot I had started posting chapters of it. 
> 
> So... here you go. The aftermath of our confused protagonist's run-in with the Devil himself! 
> 
> And uh... comments are awesome because they help me not forget I'm posting stuff. Also I get people really like my Metroid stuff and wish I were posting that instead, but it does make me a little sad when I post a new chapter of this series and see that I have a comment but it's about Metroid. 
> 
> Like, I super appreciate the support and love the fact that I wrote stories people enjoy, but I would request that Metroid comments be reserved for the Metroid stories. Thanks!
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy this odd little thing I wrote to cope with lockdown.

**Chapter 3 The First Rule of Angel Club**

By the time Bailey finally made it out of the woods, she was covered in mud, sweat, and even a bit of her own blood. In her haste, she had tripped over a couple of tree roots and faceplanted both times. She didn’t care though. Her heart was racing and she was afraid to look back. She just forced herself on toward the more populated area of the town, breathlessly running in the direction of the train tracks and the old apartment buildings. She wanted to get home.

Bailey wished she could just call a cab or a ride share, but enclosed spaces like cars had become too risky given the pandemic. She just really hoped she didn’t run into anyone. A mud-covered woman running for her life with a bloody gash on her forehead and a cut on her cheek would probably turn heads, and people might get too close and try to convince her to go to a hospital, which was the last place she wanted to be.

It was the worst possible time to be in the kind of distress she was in. Then again there was probably no good time to be in this situation. She didn’t know what to do and she couldn’t seek help, not easily anyway. Not that there would be much anyone could do against the actual Devil. Even guns probably wouldn’t be very useful against a guy who could burn three humans to death in a matter of seconds using magic fire.

It had started to rain, and Bailey slowed down once the train tracks were in sight. She was afraid of slipping again and pretty sure all of the running in the world wouldn’t have stopped Satan from following her if he had actually wanted to kill her.

Her hair and clothes were soaking wet by the time her apartment building came into view, and as much as she had wanted to get away from her apartment earlier, she wanted nothing more than to just get back to it and get in a nice hot shower and curl up in her bed. She was freezing. And she would have made it, too, if she hadn’t stopped when she noticed the lights were on in the coffee shop again.

It was after midnight now, and curfew had been at eight. There was no way the shop should be open, and she doubted they had the same reasons for people being there as the night before.

She approached the front window slowly, the sound of the pouring rain drowning out her footsteps. Once she was there, she leaned over ever so slightly to peak into the shop. There on the couch she saw the red-haired woman and the blonde man she had seen the night before. She watched them for a minute. There was something unnerving about how formal they seemed given that they were alone. Perfect posture. Same outfits that made them look like they were about to start handing out bibles on the street. She wondered where Mike and Cici were.

Then she realized how weird it was that she hadn’t seen Cici here either night given that it was apparently her relative who had been killed and she was probably the one who owned the place. There was always the chance she had been in the back or something the night before, but something still seemed off.

“Bailey?” a man’s voice called from behind her, and she almost jumped out of her skin as she turned to face the speaker and hopped back.

She was ready to bolt out of there when she realized she recognized the person in front of her.

“Mike? What are you doing out in the rain at this hour?” she asked.

“I could ask the same of you,” he said, giving her a concerned look. “You’re bleeding and soaking wet and covered in mud.”

For a moment, Bailey had forgotten the abysmal-looking state she was in and looked down at her waterlogged jeans.

“I went for a walk in the woods, and I slipped.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.

Mike looked from her to the other two people in the coffee shop.

“I know it’s probably not the best idea with everything going on, but would you like to come inside? You look like you’ve seen a ghost and I’m sure we can find you some fresh clothes and make you some hot food.”

Bailey just stared at him for a minute. She was still in shock, and she knew she wanted to get home, but she was terrified of being alone right then.

“Where are you going to find clean clothes in a coffee shop?” she asked.

“Cici probably has a clean uniform in there somewhere, and if not, I can go to our apartment upstairs and borrow something from her. She won’t mind.”

Bailey supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised Mike lived with Cici. Now that she thought about it, they were probably a couple.

“All right. That sounds good.”

She let him lead her inside, thankful once she was able to step in and out of the rain. Of course, once she was in, the heads of the two people inside turned to look at her. Bailey felt herself tense up again under their gazes. They seemed alarmed and taken back by her arrival and stared with an intensity that felt like they were looking right through her.

“Michael,” the red-haired woman said, “who is this person and why is she here?”

The blonde Viking type guy just nodded and looked at Mike as well. Up close, Bailey realized just how blue his eyes were and how the slight stubble on his square jaw gave him an even more rugged and masculine look than she had originally noticed.

“This is Bailey,” Mike said. “She fell down outside in the rain and cut her head. I said she should come in out of the cold and get some clean clothes and something to eat. I assumed the two of you were still big on altruism.”

The red-haired woman took a moment to think about that before nodding, and Bailey realized she had the greenest eyes she had ever seen. They were stunning. Like Mike and the Viking guy, everything about her was absolutely stunning. Bailey wasn’t normally attracted to women, but there was just something about the red-haired woman that she couldn’t put her finger on…

She felt a tight knot in her stomach as soon as she realized what that reminded her of. She was as unrealistically attractive as Satan had been. Both of the men were as well. Her mind started racing again, and she cursed herself for being so foolish as to come into the shop. Coffee shop open at weird hours of the night? Only on nights where horrific murders took place in the woods? And every one here had that same disturbing charm as the demon man in the forest? This was bad, she decided, and the look of horror must have been evident on her face because she realized that all of a sudden everyone was staring at her with concern.

“Are you all right, Ms. Bailey?” the Viking guy said in an absolutely melodic deep voice. “You seem troubled.”

“I’m… I guess I’m just a little shaken up. I saw some kind of animal in the woods. I don’t really know what it was, but I ran away from it and that’s why I fell.”

The Viking guy seemed satisfied with her response because he nodded and didn’t ask any other questions. Bailey had been okay with seeing Mike again, but she really didn’t feel comfortable around these two people. They seemed nice enough, but she just didn’t know them. Not that she knew Mike any better. He must have noticed something was wrong because he gently touched her shoulder and pointed to the door that led to the back of the store.

“Why don’t we get you those new clothes?” he asked. There was something about his tone and the gentle feeling of his hand on her shoulder that helped Bailey start feeling a little better.

“Yeah… sounds good.”

She walked toward the back of the store, Mike a few feet behind her as they went. She didn’t know what it was about Mike that just made her feel so comfortable with him. Perhaps it was a combination of his warmth and her own loneliness, but there was just something about the man that was so different. Or perhaps it was because he was the first person she had run into that night that wasn’t trying to murder her and didn’t have horns.

He brought Bailey a red sweater and some black jeans like Cici had been wearing earlier in the day. Then he gave her a couple of old towels to dry off with as he went back to the front of the store and closed the door to give Bailey some privacy. As soon as he was gone, Bailey looked through what was essentially just a storage room with a couple of folding chairs. It was as meticulously clean as the main part of the store was and even had a pleasant scent to it. She had thoroughly been expecting something more run down and musty. It made her wonder what kind of person Cici actually was that she cared this much about a business that never had any customers.

Bailey stripped out of her old clothes and dried herself off with the towels. Once she was sufficiently dry, she put on the sweater and jeans. The height was more or less a perfect fit, but Cici was a wider woman than Bailey was. A little on the buxom side, but she also just had a different bone structure and a larger chest. Bailey wished she had a belt to keep the pants up easier and the shirt was very baggy, but other than that things seemed okay.

After drying her hair with one of the towels as best she could and combing it out with her fingers, Bailey walked out into the main part of the store. Once again, she felt everyone’s eyes on her.

“Why don’t you come sit over with us?” Mike called from one of the oversized chairs by the old couch. The other two just stared.

“I’m actually kind of hungry. Is there anything around I can have? I’m happy to give you the money for it,” she said.

Mike just waved off her concerns as he stood up and wandered back behind the counter. He threw on Cici’s red gingham apron from earlier and turned on the grill.

“What’ll it be?”

“Oh, you’re actually going to cook?”

“I told you we’d get you something warm to eat, didn’t I?”

“I guess you did.” She forced herself to smile, a gesture he returned, albeit more genuinely.

“Bacon and eggs again? Although perhaps with decaf coffee this time?”

“Maybe just a couple of eggs scrambled on a roll with that coffee?”

“Coming right up.”

It didn’t take long for Mike to prep the meal, and once he was finished, he and Bailey went over to sit in the couch circle with the other two people. Bailey sat on the empty couch while Mike took the oversized chair he had been in earlier. She ate in silence for a while until she was finishing up and noticed the woman eyeing her closely.

“Um… hi?” Bailey said a little coldly as she made eye contact with the woman. She was getting tired of her and the Viking guy looking at her like she was a specimen under a microscope. “Are you waiting for me to do a trick or something?”

“How exactly do you know Michael?” the woman asked bluntly, seeming oblivious to her own rudeness or Bailey’s attempt to point it out.

Well that was direct at least, Bailey thought.

“I’ve seen him around town a few times, and I had coffee in here earlier today with him and Cici.”

The woman looked confused.

“Cici?” she asked.

“Just the woman who works here during the day,” Mike said dismissively. “She’s nobody important.”

Bailey blinked in surprise as just how quickly he had dismissed any mention of the waitress when earlier that day he had claimed she was the reason he hung around here. She wondered if there was some kind of infidelity going on, but it didn’t seem like Mike and the woman were together, and she couldn’t imagine why he would be so bold as to live with his mistress if they were.

“Right,” the woman said before looking back to Bailey. “You said you were in the woods and you saw a creature. What did this creature look like?”

“Was it horned?” the Viking guy asked, staring at Bailey curiously. “Did it stand on all fours or on two legs like a man?”

“…that’s oddly specific,” Mike muttered.

Bailey nearly choked on the coffee she had been drinking as she just stared at the two of them in disbelief.

“You’ve seen it too?” she asked, looking between the two of them. “Because it was horned and it did stand upright… It was dark and I didn’t get a great look at it but I do remember its eyes. It had been golden eyes that looked almost human.”

She would never forget those eyes. They seemed like they were looking through her very soul, like the creature was able to learn everything about her with just a glance.

Mike sighed, looking suddenly tired. The red-haired woman looked over to him.

“I suppose he very well may be around after all,” the woman said, still looking at Mike. “I thought you said you had everything under control.”

“I do,” Mike said, looking like it was taking everything he had to hold back from snapping at the woman. “Clearly he wasn’t out for blood or Bailey wouldn’t be here. I can’t just drive him out for no reason if he isn’t doing anything. You know how he is.”

“Michael,” the Viking man said, looking at him very seriously, “which is it? Do you have everything under control or is he back and wandering around?”

“He’s always around, Raph,” Mike said, sounding annoyed. “He has free access to be here whenever he wants and he takes advantage of that from time to time. If he’s not doing anything outside of what he’s permitted, I can’t just go and send him back to his home.”

Bailey listened for a minute, but she was starting to get the impression that maybe what she had seen in the forest hadn’t been her imagination at all. Clearly this had been no ordinary animal, and it was starting to feel like she had just avoided a run in with a serial killer and Mike was his parole officer or something.

“Look, I know this sounds crazy,” Bailey said, and all eyes turned to look at her. “But the creature spoke. He looked like he took on the form of a horned man.”

“He _spoke_ to you?” The woman asked, clearly shocked. “What did he say?”

Bailey swallowed. She could feel her hands trembling just thinking about her encounter.

“He knew my name and told me that he was the Devil.”

Mike sighed in exasperation as the other two leaned in and stared at Bailey with shock and mild horror.

“So,” Mike said after a while, “sounds like you met Satan. Just great…”

“Wait.” Bailey looked at him in confusion. “You sound almost like you believe me.”

“We do believe you,” the woman said. “This is specifically what we were worried about. Apparently, Satan is around here and he’s running around having people sacrifice each other as offerings to him.”

“Actually,” Bailey said, “I don’t think he was really so into the human sacrifice thing… he seemed pretty against it.”

“What?” the woman asked, dropping all semblance of formality as she stared at Bailey with incredulity. “What makes you say something like that?”

“Because…” Her voice broke and she had to take a deep breath to steady herself. “Some guys in cloaks and hoods grabbed me. They took out some fancy knife and told me I was going to be their next sacrifice to Satan. But then he appeared in the form of a beast…” She swallowed again. Recounting this wasn’t easy, but these were probably the only people in the world who would believe her. “And he saved me. He told all of the men that he didn’t want them to sacrifice the innocent to him, that he was only a punisher of the wicked. And then… they all just burst into these weird white flames and burned to death before my eyes…”

Bailey was shaking as her voice threatened to break again. She was having difficulty holding back tears as the cries of the burning men in their final moments played over and over again in her mind.

“Satan saved you?” the woman asked, sitting back on her couch and looking like she couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on. “If he didn’t want anything sacrificed to him, why were people doing it in the first place?”

Bailey shrugged. “The men said that Satan had commanded them to do it, but he insisted he had said no such thing. And once they were all dead, he helped me up off of the ground and took the form of the horned man. And he just… let me go.”

“He killed humans,” the Viking guy muttered.

“He killed serial killers,” Mike interjected, “not innocents. He punished the wicked, just like he’s supposed to do. If he had killed Bailey, I would have driven him back to Hell tonight, but he didn’t violate any of the laws about how he’s supposed to behave on Earth.”

“Wait,” Bailey said, a couple of pieces coming together in her head. “Satan is real, and you’re supposed to somehow enforce the boundaries of… some kind of treaty, I guess? And of if he doesn’t comply, you send him back to Hell?”

“That’s right.”

Bailey was starting to think she wasn’t so far off with the idea that Mike was Satan’s parole officer.

“And you’re Michael. As in… Michael-Michael? The angel guy?”

He sighed again, but then he nodded. “That’s also right.”

“So you’re all…?”

“It’s okay,” Michael said. “You can say it.”

“You’re all angels? And you’re in here trying to figure out what to do about Satan because apparently the actual real Devil Satan is here and walking around in the woods somewhere just outside town?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Michael replied, not sure what else to say. “Are you… all right? I know humans don’t tend to do great with this kind of information.”

“I might be in a state of shock,” she said, still finding herself unable to process anything. “I’m still trying to get over that whole part where I just watched the actual Devil commit a triple homicide right in front of me. Also just trying to wrap my head around the idea that any of this stuff is… real. I guess.”

Perhaps all of the people here were as insane as she was, Bailey thought.

“I believe,” the woman said, addressing Bailey, “that this is probably somewhat traumatic for you.”

Bailey just found herself nodding at the woman’s words without realizing it. Her whole body was on autopilot.

“Bailey,” Michael said, “Satan didn’t try to hurt you at all, did he? Did he threaten you?”

Bailey looked over to him and quickly shook her head. There was something about meeting his eyes that she found calming and grounding, and now she was wondering if that was just some kind of angel hypnosis he was doing to make her feel better and that’s why she was so perplexed by him.

“He wasn’t bad. He was actually kind of nice, I think….” She paused and looked around. “Does Cici know her coffee shop is used at night to host Angel Club?”

The three alleged angels just stared at Bailey, their faces blank as though they hadn’t even considered it.

“Angel Club?” Michael asked.

“Cici owns this place?” said the woman.

“This is a coffee shop?” asked the blond man.

“I assumed Cici was the owner?” Bailey said, glancing at Michael with confusion.

“Um… yeah,” he said. “She does own the place. And um… yeah she knows about Angel Club.”

The other two alleged angels glared daggers at him.

“Is Cici um… like you guys?” Bailey asked.

Michael shook his head. “Cici isn’t like Gabrielle, Raphael, or myself. No. She just knows about Angel Club, but she isn’t part of it.”

“Michael,” said the woman who was apparently called Gabrielle. “You have some serious explaining to do about why your pet human knows _any_ of this.”

Bailey felt like she had just stepped on a landmine and was starting to wonder if there was any way she could slip out of the shop without anyone noticing. But she doubted it, especially if by some bizarre chance these people were all really what they said they were. She wasn’t about to try pulling one over on a room full of angry angels.

“Look, Gabby,” Michael said, looking her dead in the eyes. “Earth, Satan, all this. That’s my responsibility. I keep him in line. I’ve been doing that for thousands of years, and I know Satan far better than you do. As for the people with whom I associate while I’m on Earth, that’s my business. There are no laws specifically forbidding me from revealing my nature to anyone, but I still tend to keep it to myself. But sometimes I get lonely, Gabby, and unlike all of you I don’t have any other angel-types flying around. I have a couple of human friends and my adversary. That’s it. Those are the only beings who know.”

“Michael,” Gabby said, standing up out of her seat, “Satan killed people tonight. He killed humans. Maybe they were wicked and he hasn’t crossed any lines yet, but he will. You know his nature.”

“Yes, I do know his nature,” Michael said, also standing now. “I know it better than you. And I know I haven’t had to discipline him in over two thousand years. He does his punishing evil thing from time to time and rules over Hell. The things he’s permitted to do.”

“You sound like you’re going soft on him.”

“I’m avoiding kicking a hornets’ nest because the last thing I want to do is piss off an emotionally unstable fallen angel with the power to incinerate whole human beings in under thirty seconds without having to come close enough to touch them.”

“Michael—”

“We can’t kill him, Gabby. We can only manage him. You know how it goes. And yes, if he ever gets back to causing trouble, I will take whatever action I need to but until then, my way has been working for thousands of years and I don’t need you coming in and derailing all of that.”

The door leading to the back of the shop opened suddenly and everyone froze, the tension in the air thick and heavy as whipping cream.

Cici had come into the shop and just looked at everyone wondering what the hell she had walked in on. She obviously hadn’t expected anyone to be there because all she had on was a plain black long-sleeved tee shirt and Spongebob Squarepants pajama pants. She wasn’t even wearing her glasses.

“Well don’t stop whatever you were doing on my account. I just came down here to get a danish and go back to sleep.”

“Impeccable timing, Cici,” Michael said.

Cici looked over the group of people around the couches. Her amber eyes lingered on Bailey for a moment too long, and Bailey felt a chill almost as intense as the one outside. For whatever reason, she could tell Cici didn’t want her there. Without her glasses, the woman had a very intimidating gaze, and her eyes had a much more golden hue to them.

“Aren’t you all supposed to be social distancing?” Cici said, notes of sarcasm in her tone as she went behind the counter and grabbed one of the leftover danishes from the day before. She leaned over the counter and took a bite, intrigued by the gathering.

“No, it’s okay,” Michael said, clearly trying to gauge the tension in the room and select his words carefully. “Bailey knows about Angel Club.”

Cici raised an eyebrow. “Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?”

“She had a run-in with Satan,” Mike said, looking at Cici very intensely, a gesture she returned.

“Huh. How is the old goat man doing these days?”

“You say that like you know Satan personally,” Bailey said. Cici gave her a curious look.

“You could say that.”

She proceeded to eat more of her Danish.

“Excuse me for interrupting,” Gabrielle said as she looked Cici up and down, “but why am I starting to get the impression no one here is sufficiently concerned about Satan running amok? This world is already in chaos. Do you really think things go this bad on their own?”

“I don’t know, Random-Angel-who-thinks-she-can-just-barge-into-my-house-whenever-she-wants,” Cici said in a suddenly snide tone, “why don’t you go ask your boss? Last I heard, plagues were Their department.”

Bailey was taken back by witnessing a human mouth off to an alleged angel like that. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but she supposed a good deal of reverence was part of it. Unless Cici didn’t believe them about actually being angels.

“You have a lot of nerve speaking to me that way,” Gabby snapped. “And I’ll have you know that plagues like this aren’t—"

“Cici,” Michael said as the tension in the air became palpable, “do you mind going back upstairs and leaving us to our business?”

Cici was about to retort when Gabrielle cut her off.

“Don’t bother,” said the alleged angel. “Raphael and I are leaving. We clearly have some creative differences on how to handle the Adversary, and you have even less control over your pet human than you do of him.” She turned to her partner. “Come, Raphael. Make haste.”

The blonde man stood up, looking a little confused as to what was going on, but he didn’t feel like arguing. Bailey couldn’t blame him. They were in the same boat.

“And Michael,” Gabrielle said as she was halfway out the door, “There will be a report on all of this, and we will be back.”

Michael just stared at her blankly. “Oh yes, threatening to report me to an omniscient, omnipresent being. Because I’m sure They never would have figured out what happened without that.”

Gabrielle didn’t even offer a response to that as she and Raphael closed the door behind them and left. Bailey was fully expecting to see them walk off like normal people so she could continue rationalizing the situation in her head and enjoy that skepticism, but no. They did not. Instead, an ethereal bright light appeared around them and within seconds, they had both vanished from sight.

Looking back down into her decaf coffee mug, Bailey huddled on the couch with her knees close to her chest. This had to have been a dream. It absolutely must have been a dream. She really didn’t know much about angels, but she was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to bicker like that.

“Cici,” Mike said, turning to the only other human in the room, “what were you thinking? You can’t just come down and start trying to pick fights with Gabriel! Or anyone for that matter!”

The woman snorted, looking indignant. “I don’t like the insinuation that I’m your pet. And I don’t like how she was trying to undermine you like she knows better when you’re the one who’s been doing this job for thousands of years.”

“While I appreciate you supporting and defending me through all this, we just don’t need them poking around. We need to—”

“Mike. Stop. Please just… stop.” She pinched the bridge of her nose like she was getting a headache from everything. Then she glanced over to Bailey, looking far more tired than she had just moments before. “Enough damage has been done tonight.”

He sighed. There was clearly something he wanted to say, but it remained unspoken. The only thing to break the tense silence was the rolling roar of the thunder outside.

“I’m sorry you had to see all this, Bailey,” Michael said. “Things aren’t usually this tense around here. Normally Gabriel and Raphael never come down to Earth unless they have a specific task to complete.”

“Usually things are pretty quiet,” Cici said, going behind the counter and getting another Danish. “Everything has just been a wreck this year… on quite a few different levels.”

“Yeah,” Bailey said with a nod. “You can say that again.”

She yawned, suddenly realizing just how tired she was. Between her attempted murder in the woods and then discovering all of the weird angel stuff she was exhausted, and that wasn’t even accounting for the fact that she was still in shock about having met Satan in the woods and watching him kill three people. She figured it was safe to say that any semblance of composure she had left at this point was due solely to shock and the fact that she hadn’t been able to process everything yet.

Bailey stood up abruptly.

“I should head home.”

The thunder rumbled outside, and the rain hadn’t let up at all from earlier. She briefly considered asking if she could sleep on the couch where she was, particularly given that there probably wasn’t anywhere she would be safer from Satan than in the shop with the angel who apparently kept the Devil under control. But that was too weird. And she wanted to go home. Everything had just been too much, and she needed to get away from these people for a while and finish getting her thoughts together about them.

“You’re welcome to stay here,” Michael said, but Bailey shook her head.

“No, I want to go home. I need some time to myself.”

“Give her your phone number,” Cici said. “That way if Satan or those weird cultists show up again she can text you.”

Bailey flinched at the mention of Satan or more of those cloaked figures coming after her, but Satan had made it very clear that he had no interest in ever seeing her again, and as far as she knew, none of the cultists who had seen her had survived. She was probably in more danger of the police showing up at her door saying there was some kind of security footage linking her to the triple homicide.

“Do you want someone to walk you home?” Michael asked, but Bailey shook her head.

“No. Just… no.”

She didn’t bother looking back as she went out the door and into the rain. It wasn’t far to her apartment building, but she was soaking wet again the moment she went out there. Once she was back in the building, she hurriedly ran up the steps and back into her crappy studio apartment.

She should have been scared. She knew she should have been scared. But right now, she didn’t have the emotional capacity to be scared. All she wanted to do was sleep. Sleep and wake up and be done with all of this weirdness.

Bailey was just about to throw herself down onto the bed when she realized she would feel better with some kind of protection from Satan. But what sorts of things did a person use to ward off the Devil? She looked at her humidifier, but sh didn’t exactly have a few gallons of holy water laying around to fill it with. If that even worked.

Figuring it was better than nothing, she went into her pantry—which was just a cardboard box filled with canned goods—and grabbed a jar of pickled garlic. It definitely wouldn’t be her first choice of things, but she didn’t have any whole cloves of garlic or any kind of religious artifacts aside from the Flying Spaghetti Monster magnet on her mini fridge. She felt very silly but opted to grab the magnet of the Pastafarian deity and bring it to bed with her as well.

When at last she walked across the tiny studio apartment and fell down onto her bed, she was still holding the jar and magnet, clutching them close to her chest.


	4. An Unexpected Guest

**Chapter 4: An Unexpected Guest**

Bailey must have passed out quickly the night before because one minute she had hit the pillow and the next she was laying with the sunlight coming in through the window and onto her face. She grunted a little bit, shifting the pillow to try and block out the light, a futile task since she could still feel the warm sunlight on her skin, and it was making it too hot to get comfortable in bed again.

Eventually she sat up, yawning and stretching as she looked down at the crumpled clothes she was still wearing from the night before, the red blouse and black pants she had borrowed from Cici. She took a moment to process the events of the night before as they came rushing back to her and she was horrified to realize that they definitely weren’t a dream. She felt a couple of hard things in the bed beside her and grabbed them. The jar of pickled garlic and the Flying Spaghetti Monster refrigerator magnet were both still there. She felt like a superstitious idiot for thinking they would do anything. Her memories of her supposed encounter with Satan were starting to feel more distant and surreal, and she was reaching the point of being able to convince herself again that she was misremembering it or that it was some kind of hallucination brought on by the stress of having barely left her one room apartment in weeks.

That pleasant delusion did not last long, however.

“Good to see you’re finally up,” a voice called from across the room, making Bailey’s hair stand on end.

She looked over in horror to see the horned man sitting on the floor, not even twenty feet away from her, as he watched her.

“Satan…” she muttered, unable to process words properly. The Devil, the literal actual Devil, was in her room sitting beside her unpacked box of summer clothes.

_“Lucifer,”_ he corrected, staring at her curiously. Bailey noticed his long, barbed, reptilian-looking tail curled around him, and that for some reason he was wearing glasses. At least he wasn’t in whatever that bestial form had been.

“L-Lucifer… what are you doing in my bedroom? What do you want?”

Bailey could feel her heart racing, internally panicking. She tried to remember if she had taken down Michael’s number the night before, only to remember she had left before he could give it to her. Quietly, trying not to let Lucifer notice, she took the jar of pickled garlic into her hands and hid it under the sheets as she opened it.

“To be fair,” Lucifer said, with an idle flick of his tail, “I thought this would be your living room or something. But it turns out you don’t have a living room. You don’t even really have a bedroom. Rebecca, you live in a box.”

The Devil scrunched up his nose and looked around as though the idea repulsed him. Bailey took advantage of his distraction as she managed to get the jar of garlic open and rub some of it on her forearms.

“How have you dealt with being locked down in here for all this time?” Lucifer asked as he looked back at her. His golden eyes were every bit as intense as the night before, though somehow Bailey felt less like they were boring a hole into her soul.

“I can be resourceful when situations call for it,” she said.

Lucifer seemed to notice that she was holding something under her sheets.

“What’s that you’ve got there?” he asked.

That was when Bailey took the still mostly-full jar of pickled garlic and lobbed it as hard as she could at the Devil’s face.

“BEGONE SATAN!” she yelled as she jumped to her feet and got ready to bolt from the room.

Lucifer looked shocked but managed to duck out of the way of the flying condiment before raising an eyebrow and looking back to Bailey. As the glass jar hit the wall and shattered, the smell of pickled garlic quickly filled the little room.

Bailey froze, realizing the Devil was still there between her and the only door, completely unfazed by her distraction. Her only weapon had failed her. Still, rather than retreating back, she stayed standing, glaring at Satan as she clutched the Flying Spaghetti Monster magnet close. She knew it wouldn’t do anything, but for some reason just having something to hold onto made her feel better. She knew there was no way she was getting out of this alive though. Even if she had had any chance before, there was no way Satan was going to let her go now that she had attacked. Either way, if she was going down, she was determined to go down fighting.

“Did you…” The Devil looked confused, looking between Bailey and the broken garlic jar. “Do you… think I’m a vampire or something?”

“Vampire, demon, devil. Whatever you are. You can kill me if you want to but I’m done running from you, and I’m not going down without a fight!”

Satan rolled his eyes.

“I’m not here to kill you. I already told you have no interest in doing pointless things. I punish the wicked, not the innocent.”

“Then what the hell are you doing in my house?”

Lucifer sighed and ran a hand through his long black hair. He didn’t stand up though, lest he frighten Bailey again.

“You didn’t leave me your number last night or take mine and I wanted to follow up on something.”

“You wanted to what?” Bailey glared at him. “I watched you kill three men like they were nothing. Right in front of me. At what point did you think I’d be willing to swap contact info with you like we were friends?”

“No. No. Not in the woods,” he said, tilting his head a little and looking up at her. “Later on in the coffee shop.”

“Wait you were in the—” Bailey stopped, regarded the Devil a moment longer before taking a seat back down on her mattress. “You were in the coffee shop with Michael and the others.”

“That’s right.” He nodded, studying her carefully.

“You were there the whole time. Lucifer. Lu-cici-fer.”

“Bingo. I was wondering how long it would take you to figure it out. I thought I was making myself too obvious.”

“But…” Bailey paused to think. “Cici’s a woman. You’re a man.”

“I’m not a man,” Lucifer said.

“So, are you actually a woman?”

“No.”

“Oh. Then what are you exactly?”

“I’m a sexless shapeshifter,” the Devil said.

“I see. Um… if it’s okay to ask this, what was your original form?” As soon as the words left her mouth, Bailey realized she was probably being rude. Then again, this was Satan so it seemed like a legitimate thing to ask.

“A flaming ball of light.” Lucifer chuckled. “I was the spitting image of my Old Man. Albeit smaller. Much smaller.”

Bailey had to take a moment to process all of that. This had all been too much information to take in at once.

“And I take it your Old Man is…”

Lucifer responded by pointing upward. “Fun fact. They’re also not technically a man. We all sort of predate the concept of gender.”

“That actually makes a lot of sense.” Bailey could feel herself becoming less tense, though she was still fiddling with the Flying Spaghetti Monster magnet. “So, is this like your default form now?”

Lucifer nodded. “More or less. It’s my preferred form of the century so far. Either this form or the one you met at the coffee shop. Miss Lucy Bringer, owner and proprietor of Bringer Brews coffee shop.” He seemed proud of that last part.

“I see… So, should I still call you ‘he?’ Or do you prefer ‘she?’”

“Feel free to call me whatever you like. I don’t care. Just please avoid calling me Satan. I detest that title. My name is Lucifer. Or Lucy if you insist on a nickname.”

“Is Cici okay?”

“…and we’re adding that to the list right next to ‘Satan.’ No. It’s Lucifer or Lucy. Period. Think you can handle that?”

“I can handle that.” Bailey fidgeted uncomfortably. “I still have a feeling you didn’t just come here to socialize.”

Lucifer shook his head. “No. I wanted to let you know I took care of the bodies from last night. I made sure there wasn’t a shred of evidence tying you to the scene. So, going forward, you don’t have to worry about that.”

That was actually a big relief. Bailey hadn’t even realized just how much that anxiety had been eating away at her. She sat up straighter.

“Thank you, Lucifer. That was very generous.”

“No, it wasn’t. It doesn’t just serve me at all for you to end up in prison, and I’m very proud of my work. I want to make sure it’s clearly beyond what any mere human could accomplish.”

“Wait, what did you—”

“Don’t worry about it.” The Devil smiled. “Now, I did you a favor last night when I saved you and disposed of the evidence. So, I think it’s only fair that I be able to use you for one in the future, and you would be useless to me in prison. This is a win-win.”

Bailey wasn’t sure how the fact that Satan considered her in his debt could be any kind of a win for her, but she just nodded silently.

“So, what are you thinking of asking me for?” she asked, hoping the Devil wouldn’t name too steep of a price. Not that she had much in the way of hope.

“Hmmm…” Lucifer adjusted his glasses and thought for a moment. “I’m sure something will reveal itself in time.”

Somehow, Bailey figured, this was worse than him just flat out asking her for something. How long was she going to have to live knowing the Devil could show up in her life at any time to collect on some favor he apparently thought she owed him?

“There is one other thing I came to tell you about,” Lucifer continued. “I don’t want to bring it up in front of Michael and the others. Especially not Gabriel. But there’s the issue of the other demon running around.”

“Wait, there’s another—” Bailey paused and thought for a moment. “You mean you think that whoever told those cult guys to sacrifice people to him was some other demon pretending to be you?”

The Devil nodded, his tail thumping on the floor a couple of times.

“Yes. I believe that whatever being was inciting those men to the violence they committed is indeed another of Hell’s denizens. Perhaps another shapeshifter. And it’s posing as me for some reason.”

The raised a couple of red flags for Bailey, and she was starting to wonder how much stock she should put into the Devil’s words, if that’s who this demon even was now that she thought about it.

“So how do I know they aren’t the real Lucifer and you’re the imposter? I mean, the angel-types last night seemed pretty concerned about Satan running around and you’re… I don’t know. You’re creepy, but you _did_ save my life. And if you really are who you say you are, then you’re claiming to be on good terms with Michael, the…”

Bailey paused. She really didn’t know much about angels aside from what she had seen in movies and advertisements. She knew Michael was a significant one though.

“You know… Michael the stabby angel. The one who’s always like… stabbing you in art or whatever.”

Lucifer raised an eyebrow, looking genuinely amused.

“You mean Michael the Archangel? The one who is often depicted defeating me during the Fall?”

“Yeah. That’s the word I was looking for.” Bailey felt a little embarrassed for forgetting what she supposed should have been a very basic piece of knowledge. While part of her was still trying to figure out if there was a way to distract Satan and get out of there, she found that she was growing progressively more curious with each exchange. “So, I’ve got a question. The whole falling from Heaven and getting stabbed by Michael thing. How true is it?”

Lucifer looked off to the side, his face growing more serious as he considered something. After a moment of silence, Bailey wondered if she had offended him.

“It’s true,” Lucifer said, carefully putting his words together. “I did rebel. And I did fall. And Michael was the one who stabbed me. I don’t know what details you’ve heard, but… well, it was all a very long time ago. People grow and life happens, and sometimes you lay old animosities to rest when they no longer serve you.”

“I see…” Bailey wasn’t sure what to say. She supposed that the creation of the universe—or whenever all that had supposedly happened—had been a long time ago. “And you just don’t hold it against him anymore? Even though he stabbed you?”

“Michael is a good man,” Lucifer said with a strange reverence that surprised Bailey. “He had reasons for doing what he did, and I’m not blameless.”

“That’s really not something I would expect Satan to say,” Bailey said, not looking to be confrontational. She was simply curious about the Devil’s unexpected admission.

“And for most of my existence I never would have said it. And if I thought anyone would actually believe you if you told them what I said, I probably wouldn’t have said it either. I do have an image to maintain, after all.”

“The Satan image?”

“Mmmm.”

“And you don’t think living as a barista at an old coffee shop tarnishes all that?”

Lucifer shrugged. “I don’t really care about that. What’s the point of being the ruler of Hell if you can’t go off and do what you want from time to time?”

Bailey wanted to respond to that but decided it was better to just hold her tongue. She had always assumed that the ruler of Hell didn’t have very flexible hours. Well, she had assumed that in as much as she had ever bothered thinking about the personal life of the ruler of Hell, which she never had until now.

“So, you’re not evil?” she asked.

“I never said that. I suppose it depends on your definition of evil, but that’s a whole other conversation.”

Lucifer stood up and shook his head.

“I would like to think I’m not as bad as Gabriel makes me out to be. At the very least, I wouldn’t try to start a cult that sacrifices random humans to me. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a huge fan of human suffering, particularly not when it’s caused by other humans. Whatever demon is going around trying to pass themself off as me clearly is. I don’t know if they genuinely enjoy causing suffering or if they are trying to call my attention to them. Either way, they certainly succeeded.”

Running a hand through his hair, Lucifer looked agitated. His golden eyes had flicked away from Bailey. He was clearly lost in thought.

Bailey took a minute to look over the Devil, focusing her attention on his horns and then gazing over to his long dragon-like tail. She had to wonder why he had bothered with the horns and tail in this form when it was clear that he was perfectly capable of taking on a fully-human looking form.

Following Lucifer’s lead, Bailey slowly got to her feet as well, carefully eyeing the Devil to see if he reacted at all, but he seemed distracted by whatever he was thinking about.

“What are you planning to do when you find the demon impersonating you?” Bailey asked, remembering all too clearly the way he had destroyed the three cultists. It was an image she would never be able to forget.

Bailey felt a cold dread shoot through her as Lucifer’s eyes gleamed maniacally in her direction. The Devil’s visage had taken on a very different mood, almost gleefully sadistic.

“What do you think I’m going to do?” he asked. “You of all people should be familiar enough by now with how I dispose of my enemies.”

Taking a step back, Bailey shuddered. This was the most demonic Lucifer had looked since the moment she had first encountered him, and she found it terrifying. She thought for a moment that she was going to end up falling backwards onto her mattress, but she stayed on her feet, carefully studying the Devil.

“I suppose I am…”

Little by little, Lucifer’s face returned to a more neutral expression, and he seemed lost in thought once more as he adjusted his glasses. Bailey wondered if it was a habit he had picked up in his time posing as Lucy Bringer since she couldn’t imagine why a former celestial being would need to wear glasses. It gave him an odd look. There was a stark contrast between his strangely, almost other-worldly beauty with all of its demonic attributes and the glasses he wore. They made him look a bit less intimidating than the night before, and there was an oddly human quality about him that there hadn’t been last time he was in this form.

“I’m going to head back to my shop,” Lucifer said, any hint of his earlier sadistic glee gone from his visage and tone. “You’re welcome to join me. Michael is probably at work, and hopefully Gabriel and Raphael don’t return. If they do, that might be an issue.”

Bailey hesitated for a second, unsure what he had meant by that.

“What would they do to you if they found you?”

Lucifer shrugged. “I just don’t want them to find out Michael and I have been fraternizing. They might give him a hard time.”

“But would they do anything to you? Throw you back into Hell? Kill you?”

“Probably not,” Lucifer said, “but who knows? I don’t think I can die, but the only basis I have for saying that is that I haven’t died yet. I don’t care at this point.”

Bailey wasn’t sure what to say about that. There was almost a note of resignation in his voice, and in spite of her better judgment, she couldn’t help but feel a little sad to hear it. Yes, this was the Devil themself, but she felt a slight sympathy for him. Probably because he had saved her life and she was starved for any kind of real human contact. Though, she wasn’t sure whether or not this even counted as human contact given that being human was likely a prerequisite for that.

She was about to say something when the Devil’s form began to distort, and he seemed to shrink a bit, being obscured by some kind of darkness before coming back into focus. Instead of the demonic horned Lucifer, “Cici” was standing before Bailey once more. Though she figured she should probably stop thinking of the woman as Cici and start thinking of her as Lucy Bringer.

Lucy was staring curiously at Bailey, a bit of a devilish gleam in her eye. It seemed Bailey’s confusion amused her.

“What? You’ve seen me transform before,” Lucy said in the much more familiar voice of the woman from the coffee shop.

“I have,” Bailey said, taking a step closer. Despite knowing they were the same person, Bailey was much more comfortable seeing the Devil in her Lucy form. “But that doesn’t mean I’m used to it yet. Plus, this time, you turned into someone who actually looks human.”

“Mmm. I guess I can see how that might be a bit more jarring for you.”

“If passing for a human matters so much to you, why did you have horns and a tail in that other form?”

“Oh that?” Lucy laughed lightly. “When they aren’t visible, my head kind of itches. But also, I just like them. It feels more comfortable for me. Michael likes having wings when he can. I like my horns. Or at least I like them now. I wasn’t so crazy about them when they first appeared.”

Bailey wanted to ask more about that, but Lucy was already on her way out the door.

“Hey wait!” she called after the Devil. “At least give me a minute to put on some real clothes and run a brush through my hair.”

Lucy turned back and raised an eyebrow. “Oh? First you throw a jar of garlic at my head and shout for me to begone. Now you want me to hang around longer so we can walk to my coffee shop together?”

“Well for one thing, when I woke up and saw you in my bedroom, I thought you were here to murder me, and for another thing, hell yeah I want to go back to the coffee shop. I’m so sick of this place.”

Lucy looked around, nodding as she adjusted her glasses. “It is truly a depressing box filled with boxes. Seriously. There are better looking places in Hell.”

Bailey frowned as she grabbed jeans and a tee-shirt from her clean clothes pile.

“I get it, Lucifer. You don’t have to rub it in.”

Lucy actually smiled at the mention of her real name, and Bailey had to wonder why something as simple as that was such a big deal to her.

“Gimme a minute,” Bailey said as she carried her clothes into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

She proceeded to brush her teeth and stripped down out of her pajamas, pausing a minute to stare at herself in the mirror and ask if she was truly standing there half naked with a toothbrush in her mouth and the actual Satan standing barely six feet away from her with only a cheap door separating them.

Yes. Yes, she was. Somehow, every time she found herself thinking that things couldn’t get any weirder or more messed up, 2020 had found a way to surprise her. This time it was in the form of an ancient immortal being that both owned a coffee shop and was willing to commit a triple homicide like it was no big deal. And Bailey actually wanted to spend more time with this being.

She pulled on her jeans and spit out her toothpaste into the sink before rinsing with water. She looked at herself in the mirror again, really stared herself deep in the eyes.

“Do you have a death wish or are you just an idiot?” she mouthed to herself, but she found she was strangely apathetic about the answer.

The world was on fire. Nothing was normal. The only contact she had had with another human being in months was when those cultists had grabbed and attempted to murder her. Spending time with Satan and his angel pals seemed like one of the less self-destructive things she could do these days. Plus, he didn’t seem like such a bad guy, triple homicide notwithstanding. Somehow, Bailey just couldn’t find it in herself to be upset about Lucifer killing the cultists though.

She threw on a shirt quick, ran a brush through her hair, and opened the door to find Lucy still waiting for her.

“Okay,” she said, grabbing a mask. “Ready to go.”

“Excellent,” said the Devil as she began leading the way out of the tiny apartment and out toward the road.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: I'm only one day late posting this chapter. Hurray! Anyway, please enjoy and leave a comment if you can. Thanks!

**Chapter 5**

"So," Bailey said as they stepped out onto the street. "I understand what I get out of hanging out with you and Michael, but what do you two get out of hanging out with me?"

"That's easy. We're immortal and bored. Michael likes to help people and spread kindness and all that crap, and I like things that amuse me."

"And I take it that I amuse you?"

"You threw a jar of pickled garlic at my head, screamed 'begone Satan,' and tried to protect yourself from the Devil by using a Flying Spaghetti Monster refrigerator magnet. No offense, girl, but either you are a fucking anomaly or this isolation is having some weird effects on the humans these days. Either way, I am dying to study this more and see what happens next."

"I see…" Bailey wasn't sure how to feel about that, but at least it seemed like Lucifer was being honest. Probably. She figured it might be advantageous to take most of the things the Devil said with a grain of salt.

"Seriously, even I've never seen anything like this before. It's like the planet is just closed and it's a global coordinated effort that affects almost every human in existence. Not to mention the technology your species has now. It's bizarre. I'm terrible at keeping up with technology."

"Is that why your shop looks like it hasn't been updated since 1996?"

"Cut me some slack. At least it's the right century."

"No, Lucifer, it's literally not."

The Devil looked like she was about to respond but didn't because they had arrived at their destination. Lucy pulled open the door and stepped into her shop only to find that Gabrielle and Raphael were already there, standing by the couches as they had last night. Bailey took off her mask and slipped it into her pocket. Not like angels could spread disease. Probably.

"You know we were closed, right?" Lucy said, clearly on edge upon seeing the two of them. "There's this thing called breaking and entering, and it's kind of a crime here."

"Where is Michael?" Gabrielle asked as Lucy went behind the counter and started preparing to open the shop for business.

"At work, I'd assume. Considering I've had more people show up here and just eat my food this week than actual customers, you can imagine this place isn't exactly a gold mine. So, Michael has a real job."

"Are you his consort, Ms. Bringer?"

Lucy snorted at the question.

"Hell no. He's just my weird angel roommate. Because there is nothing human women want more in life than having a random archangel sleeping on their pullout couch for two hundred bucks a month."

"Do you know when Mike will be back?" Raphael asked as Gabrielle was still trying to piece together what a pullout couch was.

"Probably around 3," Lucy said as she began brewing the first coffee of the day. She pointed over to a large clock on the wall that looked like something out of a 1950's diner. "That's when the little hand is on the 3 and the big hand is on the 12."

"Thank you, Ms. Bringer," Gabrielle said, "but we know how to tell time."

"Just trying to be helpful," the Devil said in her most innocent tone of voice. "I don't really know the goings-on of the lives of angels who don't live on my couch."

As the first pot finished brewing, Lucy poured two cups of coffee and gave one to Bailey. She put some milk on the counter for Bailey as she proceeded to drink her own coffee black.

"You two are welcome to help yourselves," Lucy said, looking at the two angels. "You're also welcome to pay for your drinks this time, although I'm kind of skeptical about whether you even have any money."

"Theoretically, Michael shouldn't even have money," Gabrielle said as she eyed the coffee pots, "but I suppose after being on Earth all these years, he's had to adapt, and I can't really fault him for that."

That caught Bailey's attention as she finished pouring the milk into her coffee and began stirring it. Lucy took the milk and put it back into the mini-fridge.

"How long has Michael been on Earth?" Bailey asked.

Gabrielle looked over to her, surprised as though she had forgotten there was a fourth person in the room.

"Since the dawn of humanity," she said. "Michael was told to stay here after the fall of Man from the Garden. He has wandered the Earth ever since, protecting it from Satan."

"I see…" Bailey couldn't help but wonder how often the other angels had visited him down here on Earth. He must have been lonely if he had turned to Lucifer of all people as a friend. Bailey glanced over to Lucy to see how she responded to hearing the name Satan, but she didn't react at all.

"Speaking of Satan," Gabrielle said, "you haven't had any more run-ins with him, have you?"

Bailey figured it was better to dodge the question than to lie directly to an angel. That was probably a sin or something. Probably a bad one? She wasn't sure if there was any sin protocol that stated lying to an angel was worse than lying to a human.

"I'm not too worried about Satan," she said. "He didn't seem that interested in me last night anyway. I figure he's probably gone off to steal more souls or eat some babies or something."

Lucy looked like she wanted to slam her face repeatedly into the countertop, but she resisted that urge.

"Probably off seducing women and drinking their blood," Raphael added with a sage nod. "And then digging a hole to sleep in."

Lucifer looked like she wanted to jump over the bar and strangle him, and for some reason this amused Bailey.

"It's okay," Bailey said. "I plan on buying more garlic today to keep him out of my house, not that I would ever invite him in anyway."

Gabrielle nodded. "Very smart."

"SATAN ISN'T A FUCKING VAMPIRE!" Lucy suddenly screamed, apparently too exasperated to go on holding her tongue.

Three heads turned to look at the Devil, and the look on her face made it clear she wished that she had held her tongue. Gabrielle eyed her suspiciously.

"Strangely defensive about Satan," the angel said as she studied Lucy up and down. "I _thought_ you looked familiar."

Lucy grunted at Gabrielle and glared a particularly nasty glare. Bailey wasn't sure if she should do something to intervene. On one hand, she felt a strange sense of loyalty to the devil that had saved her life, but on the other hand, she didn't exactly know the history between all of these immortal beings.

"Say what you're thinking, Gabriel," Lucifer said, looking like she was ready to transform back into her more demonic form.

"You're one of the Fallen," Gabrielle said. "A cherub, perhaps. Maybe a throne. Or probably one of the lower orders. But I had my suspicions since last night when we met."

Lucy's expression changed suddenly, and she no longer looked like she wanted to maul Gabrielle. She mockingly put her hands up as though in surrender.

"You got me there," said the Devil. "I'm a fallen cherub. A little defensive of Lord Lucifer for obvious reasons."

Gabrielle looked smugly satisfied with herself.

"And the name, 'Ci-ci.' What's your actual name, cherub?"

"My name was Arcenciel," Lucifer said. "I was the angel of rainbows before that fateful fall."

She said the last sentence with a more dramatic flair, as though haunted by the memories of the Fall. Or at least faking being haunted by the memories of the Fall. Either way, Bailey knew Lucy was messing with Gabrielle. Bailey had no idea if there actually was such thing as an angel of rainbows, but then again, twenty-four hours ago she had been sure there was no such thing as angels period.

"Arcenciel?" Gabrielle asked with a raised eyebrow and skeptical look on her face. "I wasn't aware any of us had French names."

Lucifer shook her head sadly. "Ah, I know it's strange but who are we to question the will of our Creator and the names They have bestowed upon us so lovingly?"

Bailey actively had to suppress her laughter. Hearing things like that from the Devil was amusing, and Bailey found herself questioning whether or not Lucifer was actually her name or not. Didn't angel names end in -el? She wondered if Lucifer's name change had been part of her rebellion back in the day as well.

"I suppose I can't argue with that logic," Gabrielle said, though she didn't sound convinced in the slightest.

Bailey wondered how the Hell no one recognized Lucy as Lucifer, but if the Devil was a shapeshifter, that was probably enough to explain it. She poured herself a second cup of coffee before glancing over at Raphael and then back to Gabrielle and Lucy.

"Weird to hear a _fallen_ cherub talk like that though," said Gabrielle, still staring at Lucifer skeptically.

"What can I say? A million years is a long time," Lucy replied, pouring herself another cup of coffee. "Rebel one time and be forever damned, right? It's like no one is capable of reassessing their choices and their loyalties. Not that I regret the rebellion, of course. Though I don't care to be the one to stoke the animosity between the two sides all these millennia later."

"Is that how you actually feel?" Bailey asked the Devil, but Lucifer just gave her the side eye and sipped her coffee silently.

Gabrielle sighed. "I suppose not all of you are Satan, so that makes sense. By the way, _Arcenciel_ , could I get two cups of coffee? One for me and one for Raphael, of course."

Lucifer snorted at that. "Serve your own undamned self, Gabriel. Service is for paying customers only and only when I feel like it. You know where the coffee and the cups are."

Raphael looked confused as he pointed over to Bailey. "But you served her."

"…that's different."

"How?"

"Because."

"That's not an argument," Gabrielle interjected, looking between Lucifer and Bailey. "Have you taken a human consort?"

"Why do you keep asking if everyone I'm remotely nice to is my consort?" Lucifer asked. "Stop trying to figure out what my sex life entails, you undamned pervert."

"You didn't answer the question."

"Yes, I've taken a human consort. No, it's not Rebecca."

That was news to Bailey, although she supposed it shouldn't have been. Lucifer was the ruler of Hell, after all. In theory anyway.

"And for the record," Lucifer continued, "while I've had thousands of demon lovers, that human consort is my _wife_ and I only have one of those."

The Devil was married? That surprised Bailey, especially if she was married to a human. Then again, it was possible Lucy was just lying, although Bailey was starting to get the impression she didn't do that nearly as much as her title as the "Father of Lies" suggested. Then again, the best liars did always mix it with the truth. And others could spin the barest threads of truth into something more convenient for themselves.

"A fallen angel married a mortal?" Gabrielle seemed skeptical as she walked behind the counter and began pouring coffee for herself and Raphael, Lucy watching her like a hawk the entire time. Bailey was pretty sure it had less to do with any fear of Gabrielle stealing anything, and more to do with the idea that the angel might spill something or put it back wrong and mess up Lucifer's meticulously clean and organized arrangement.

"What can I say?" Lucy asked, looking mildly irritated by how Gabrielle had put back the coffee pot. "I'm full of surprises."

Taking the other coffee over to Raphael, Gabrielle sipped her own. Lucy took a few seconds to adjust the coffee pot to how she liked it. Bailey followed the two angels over to the circle of couches and oversized chairs and took a seat on one of the latter.

"So," she asked, her mind much clearer than it had been last time she had seen the angels and now brimming with questions for them. "I know I got the whole thing about you guys being angels and stuff last night, but do you mind if I just ask a few more questions? This is kind of the most interesting thing that's happened this year. Well, the most interesting not-catastrophic thing anyway."

"You can ask," Gabrielle said. "Although we may opt not to answer certain things."

"I'm happy to answer pretty much anything," said Raphael with a genuinely friendly smile. "I actually really like talking to humans, haven't done it in a few thousand years though."

Bailey didn't look over to Lucifer, though she could feel the Devil's eyes on her back.

"Do you guys really have wings? And halos and stuff?"

Raphael laughed, grinning the whole time. It seemed like the question caught him off guard, and Bailey wondered what else he had been expecting.

"Wings, yes. Halos, kind of. Not the gold ring things you're thinking of but more like a light that we emit. Probably more like an aura. Of course, we can turn it on and off at will."

"And angel wings are just those big feathery white things from all the paintings?"

"Well," Raphael said with a pause as he thought it over, "let's just say most of us don't really look like that. We can all take humanoid forms, and then yes, we have feathery wings. But they're all different colors and have different markings. Michael, for instance, has the wings of an eagle, and they suit him quite well."

"So, you all have some ability to shapeshift," Bailey said as she tried to picture Michael with eagle wings. "And that's why Satan can change forms? All of you are shapeshifters like him?"

"Not quite." Gabrielle looked serious, even more serious than usual, as she weighed the options about what to tell Bailey and what not to. "Satan is kind of a strange angel, given that he's not truly an angel anymore. He's sort of the exception to everything you've asked about. Yes, he's a shapeshifter, a far better shapeshifter than any other angel in Creation. Far be it from me to say anything nice about Satan, but he excels at skilled magic like that. But I suppose he actually needs it more than any of us. He doesn't have any wings or what Raphael described to you as a halo. Since he doesn't have much real power anymore, he has to rely upon skills that angels like us have no need for."

Out of the corner of her eye, Bailey could see Lucifer retreating into the back room behind the counter. She seemed uncomfortable, and Bailey didn't blame her, but Bailey was a journalist and therefore extremely curious.

"Why doesn't Satan have wings or a halo? Was he just made that way or did they disappear?"

"That," Raphael said, "is a very interesting and somewhat complicated story, but I would be happy to tell you what went down with him."

Gabrielle nodded. "Raph tells the story better than I do. He was the one who first told it to Adam, after all."

"Who's Ad—" Halfway through her question, Bailey's eyes went wide for a second as something clicked. "Oh… that Adam."

Gabrielle nodded.

"Satan," Raphael began, "used to be the most powerful and most exalted of all the angels. He sat at the left hand of the Creator and was the only one of us allowed access to the Empyrion where They lived. At the time, he was not called Satan. He had another name that those of the angelic host no longer speak aloud. It starts with an 'L' and I imagine you've heard it before."

"Lucifer?"

Raphael nodded. "It meant 'Light Bringer,' and he had the brightest and most dazzling light of all of us. He held a special place in the sky as the Morning Star and would rise before even the Sun. Unfortunately, he grew arrogant. He was the leader of our troops and had defeated even the likes of Zeus in battle—quite brutally, I might add. He didn't have any concept of mercy, and eventually he started getting bizarre ideas in his head. He was the first angel to discover lying and disobedience, which he began practicing as soon as he could. He even questioned whether or not he was an angel and if he was actually a god equal to or greater than the Creator."

"Delusions of grandeur," Gabrielle said before taking a sip of her coffee. "He was a violent deceitful mess of an angel even before his fateful rebellion, which was a deluded joke in and of itself."

"How did such a terrible guy end up being BFFs with the Creator to begin with?" Bailey asked, trying to imagine Lucifer as they described him.

"BFFs?" Raphael asked, tilting his head ever so slightly in an almost cute manner.

"Best Friends Forever. Or… I guess not forever in this case. Because of the whole rebelling and falling thing."

"Ah," Raphael ran a hand through his blonde hair, giving it a slightly shaggier look that complimented his masculine stubble. "I always wondered myself what the Creator saw in Satan. They were practically inseparable for billions of years. Who am I to question the Creator though? That was Satan's thing, and look how that turned out."

Gabrielle laughed, and Bailey had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. Considering she spent her life questioning and investigating things, that line of thinking just seemed ridiculous.

"At any rate," Raphael continued, "The Creator one day made the announcement that They would be creating a brand new being, Man, and that we were all, in our angelic duties, to serve this new creation. Most of us were happy and rejoiced at the announcement of the new beings, but the angel who would become Satan grew angry and jealous. He stood up and shouted that he refused to serve humans, and then he rallied about one third of Heaven to his side. At first it seemed like they just wanted to branch off and do their own thing, but then they attempted a coup, and war broke out in Heaven."

"Dark times," Gabrielle said with a haunted look on her face as though the events were replaying in her mind. Bailey felt a moment of genuine sympathy for her.

"Of course, Satan lost." Raphael seemed somber thinking about it but nowhere near as distressed as Gabrielle. "It was Michael who dealt the final blow to Satan, casting him down to the flaming lake. His angels all fell with him. That was supposed to be the end of them since they were supposed to stay chained to the flaming lake for eternity. I'm not really sure how they got free, but for the most part they just made their home in a new place they named 'Hell' with a big capitol city they called Pandemonium."

"Satan does come back periodically to walk the Earth," Gabrielle added. "That whole Garden of Eden story is true."

"I see…" Bailey paused. "But that doesn't answer what happened to his wings and halo."

"His light eventually went out of him," Raphael said. "It began growing weaker from the moment he fell until one day it was just gone entirely. As for his wings…"

"They were torn off," Gabrielle added. "All six of them. Because of what he did to Adam and Eve. I helped tear them off. Now he can never get to Paradiso again."

Bailey felt a grim feeling come over her, and she now understood why Lucifer hated Gabriel so much. She couldn't imagine what that must have been like, and while it disturbed her that she was sympathizing with the Devil, she couldn't help herself.

"He had the most beautiful wings too," Raphael said. "Pure gold and radiating a golden light. Sometimes they would be flaming, and he just looked so regal. Truly one of the most stunning angels ever to have existed. It wasn't hard to see why his people saw him as a king or even a god."

"But if he's a shapeshifter, couldn't he just—"

Gabrielle shook her head to cut Bailey off.

"No. He can take on winged forms, of course, but they would only be physical wings capable of normal flight at best, not angel wings that could fly him to places like Paradiso or grant him his lost powers back."

"So…" Bailey wondered if Lucy was listening in or not and realized she must have been since the Devil had reappeared to get herself yet another cup of coffee. "Satan just spends all of his time tormenting and torturing humans because he's bitter he doesn't glow anymore? I mean, more to it than that obviously but… yeah."

"More or less, I suppose." Raphael looked like he hadn't totally followed her reasoning but didn't seem interested in engaging further.

"Is that an accurate assessment of your boss, Arcenciel?" Gabrielle asked as she turned to look at Lucy.

Lucifer looked over to her with a raised eyebrow.

"No comment."

"Because it's accurate?" Gabrielle pressed.

"Because it's pointless trying to defend a devil to an angel, let alone a self-righteous one who torn his wings off," Lucifer said, her bitterness barely hidden.

"I've always had to ask but have never had to opportunity to speak to one of the fallen this long," Gabrielle said, eyeing Lucy curiously. "Why do all of you still follow him? Why is he still your king? All he ever did was lead you all to ruin."

"Why do you have such a morbid fascination with the lives of fallen angels?" Lucy asked. "Genuinely, what does it matter to you? Do you actually care about any of us? Or are you trying to ease your own mind about something? Because I have a feeling that if it was the former, we wouldn't have gone hundreds of thousands of years without seeing you."

Gabrielle stared at Lucifer, not sure what to think of her. She knew that something was off and that "Arcenciel" was likely an alias, but she wasn't sure what it was. Meanwhile, Lucifer seemed to be getting more irritated by the second.

"I'm going in the back," Lucy said, turning to head to the door behind the counter. "If you want anything, serve your own damn self. And maybe consider paying for it while you're at it. I never signed up for my shop to be the hub of Angel Club."

As Lucifer disappeared into the back of the shop, Bailey stood around for a moment, unsure if she should follow her. She looked over to Gabrielle and Raphael staring at her and figured following Lucy would be less awkward. Somehow, the Devil was easier to talk to than either of the angels.


	6. What's a Rogue Demon?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anything is formatted wrong, please let me know. It made me use html for some reason, and I haven't used that since Myspace was big.
> 
> Enjoy and please comment! It just makes me really happy.

Chapter 6: What's a Rogue Demon?

The back of the coffee shop was pretty much the same as it had been last night. Refrigerators and boxes everywhere with a couple of uniforms hung up neatly on the wall. Bailey was still amazed that, given how much was back here, everything looked pristine and perfectly organized.  
  
“Was it you or Michael who got really into Marie Kondo?” Bailey asked, looking over to Lucifer who was putting on her red work apron over her black button down and slacks.  
“Hmm?” Lucifer glanced over. “Marie who?”  
  
Bailey shook her head. “Never mind. I meant which one of you is so big on organization?”  
  
“Heh…” Lucifer let out a deep chuckle with a pained expression. “It definitely isn’t Michael. Not in the slightest. I don’t even let him back here usually. This is all me.”  
  
“Wow.” Bailey ran a hand along a cardboard box as she looked over to a shelf full of dry ingredients, somehow organized by both height and color. “I guess the Devil really is in the details.”  
  
Lucifer gave her the most deadpan expression, and the two of them just stared at each other for a full thirty seconds.  
  
“Guess you’ve heard that one before?” Bailey asked.  
  
“You think? What is it with you humans and all making the same puns?”  
  
“To be fair, I think you’ve met more humans than I’ve met devils.”  
  
“I suppose that’s fair.” Lucifer walked over to the door and peaked into the main portion of the shop. She frowned. “Why the hell are they still here? Why are they even here to begin with?”  
  
Bailey walked over to look as well. She was starting to think that Lucifer’s secrecy in the angels’ presence didn’t have to do with bothering Michael so much as she was just anxious around them.  
  
“Is it true that Gabrielle tore your wings off?”  
  
Lucy looked surprised as she glanced over to Bailey. She hastily shut the door again and began walking to the back of the storage room. Baily followed and discovered that behind the stacks of boxes, there was a small area with one of the tables and a couple of the chairs from the main room. Lucifer took a seat and gestured for Bailey to do so as well.  
  
“Yes,” the Devil said with a note of hesitation in her voice as Bailey sat down. “Or at least, she was one of the people there. I haven’t seen her since, and it was a very very long time ago. I wish she would just go and fuck off for another two hundred thousand years.”  
  
Lucifer’s anxiety was suddenly making more sense to Bailey, and she wondered how powerful Gabrielle must have been given what she had seen Lucifer able to do out in the woods. That was assuming Gabrielle had taken her down alone, though it sounded like there were multiple attackers.  
  
“Why did she do that, if you don’t mind my asking?” Bailey figured she was probably pushing her luck by asking for details, but her inner journalist needed the whole story. It was practically a craving.  
  
“A lot of reasons,” Lucifer said, looking off to the side as though staring out in the distance. “I was already fallen then, so they all knew of my treachery. I had led a war against Heaven. And I had returned to Earth and ruined Man. She had a lot of good reasons, I guess.”  
  
Bailey thought that over for a while. It was a lot to process. Her brain still wasn’t quite done processing the fact that the woman sitting in front of her was the Devil, least of all that she was the Satan she had seen in the woods. Those last sentences were a sharp reminder though, and it sent a shiver down her spine.  
  
“So, the Adam and Eve thing is true?”  
  
“More or less. I never lied to them though. I just told them things Mother had held back. Eve ate the fruit willingly. She wasn’t exactly the damsel in distress seduced by a snake that people think she was. The punishment was the same as the one you heard though. Cast out of the garden and a series of sexist burdens on women for the generations to come. Truth be told, I hadn’t considered the Creator would punish her so harshly. I thought They would bring down Their wrath on me first and foremost and sort of give Adam and Eve equal slaps on the wrist.”  
  
“And the Creator sent Gabrielle to take away your wings?”  
  
Lucifer shook her head. “The Creator just cursed the denizens of Hell to be ‘ugly’ and develop animal-like features. Gabrielle and a couple of others took it upon themselves to punish me. She wasn’t technically the one who tore off my wings. She was just there. Believe it or not, it was Zeus who actually did it. My power was already waning after the Fall, and he saw it as a good time to get vengeance for other times we had faced one another. Gabrielle just… well, she didn’t help when I called out to her. She just watched, barely out of my arm’s reach.”  
  
“That…” Bailey paused. “I can see how that would make you hate her.”  
  
She could also see why Lucifer would have so much anxiety about being around her now. Angel Wing PTSD sounded like it could last a few hundred thousand years.  
  
“Wait…” Bailey’s eyes went wide as she realized something. “Are you telling me Zeus is real too?”  
  
“Unfortunately, yes.”  
  
“And the rest of the—”  
  
“It’s complicated.”  
  
“Huh.”  
  
“I don’t know why humans think only one of their worldviews is correct. There’s a whole universe out there and things I haven’t even heard of, and I’m older than time.”  
  
Bailey had to think about that for a while. It was somehow more mind-boggling than just believing that angels and devils were real. Zeus, Anubis, Thor… the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Were those all real too? What about Santa Claus? She figured at least some of those had to be made up, particularly the last one.  
  
“More seriously,” Lucifer continued, setting down her coffee, “the real reason I brought you here is to talk about our little serial killer friend, the one who is impersonating me and running a demon cult.”  
  
Bailey flinched at the memory of the night before, when she had been accosted by the hooded figures and almost killed. And then, strangely enough, rescued by Satan.  
  
“You don’t think you incinerated all of them last night?”  
  
Lucifer shook her head.  
  
“Those were just henchmen. I’m convinced there’s an actual demon in the center of this, and it’s trying to draw me out to confront it.”  
  
“And I take it you want to confront it?” Bailey asked, concerned about how she could tie into all this.  
  
“Of course. I’m Lord of Hell, am I not? Controlling its demon population and keeping it away from humanity is part of my job description. Not that I’m always very on top of that but still…. Either way, this demon specifically targeted someone I knew, and I can’t just let that stand.”  
  
“Oh yeah. You knew the person.” In the chaos, Bailey had forgotten that Lucy was supposedly the emergency contact the police had gotten in touch with when they had found the body. She had figured that was just a cover story to hide the fact that Lucy was Satan but if it was true, that didn’t have the best implications. “Wait, do they know that now I’m someone you know?”  
  
“Possibly. I’m not sure which demon it is. They could be listening to us this very moment.”  
  
Well that was creepy. Bailey looked around. It was clear from her face just how weirded out she was by the idea.  
  
“Calm down,” Lucifer said. “Now that I know they’re around, I’m not going to let them hurt you. They would have to be extremely stupid to try and attack you while I’m around.”  
  
“Wait… is that why you were in my bedroom this morning? Looking all Satany?”  
  
“There is a method to my madness,” the Devil said with a smirk. “Yes, I was keeping an eye on you since the demon may have seen us together last night. It’s also why I came downstairs after you got to the shop. I had been following you, but I figured it would freak you out so I appeared in this form, which you had seemed more okay with.”  
  
“…why are you bothering to protect me?”  
  
Lucifer shrugged.  
  
“Why shouldn’t I? You’re not a terrible person. You don’t deserve that kind of death. And it was purely by accident that our paths ended up crossing and then you decided to go to a crime scene in the woods for some reason.”  
  
“Probably not one of the better ideas I’ve ever had.”  
  
“You think?”  
  
“How do you know I’m not a bad person though?” Bailey asked. “I mean, you barely know me. I haven’t told you much about myself.”  
  
“Hm. Uncomfortable question time.” Lucifer sighed. She took off her glasses and started cleaning them with her shirt. She avoided looking at Bailey. “I took a look into your soul back when we were in the woods. You’re not exactly a saint, but you’re an average decent person.”  
  
“…you looked into my soul? That’s a thing that you can do…? What?”  
  
“How do you think I judge humans?” When she had determined they were sufficiently clean, Lucy put her glasses back on and looked at Bailey. “People come to Hell, and I can see what their various ‘sins’ were throughout their lives. It’s how I know where to put them, and it works on living humans too.”  
  
That had some terrifying implications. Bailey wasn’t sure what to make of it.  
  
“Don’t worry,” Lucifer continued. “I don’t plan on looking into your soul again. It was an accident that it even happened the first time. I was trying to get clues about the cultists but you just happened to be there so I saw your soul as well.”  
  
“Not sure if that makes it better or worse… I’m just trying to get past the idea that the Devil can see souls.”  
  
“Sometimes I forget just how little people know about what being the Devil entails. At any rate, you’re not bad. I don’t hate being around you because you don’t disgust me. So, I figure I’m not just going to leave you to die horribly.”  
  
“…how charming.”  
  
“What can I say? I have low standards.”  
  
“What’s what everyone wants to hear from their guardian angel.”  
  
Lucifer suddenly looked horrified, presumably at the concept that she was Bailey’s guardian angel.  
  
“This is a temporary arrangement,” the Devil said. “I’m not the guardian angel type. I am the exact opposite. I am the reckless-endangerment-devil type. So, let’s get that clear first and foremost. I may be doing this right now to help you out, but I am literally Satan.”  
  
“Right right…” Bailey wasn’t sure what to say to that. The fact that Lucifer was literally Satan hadn’t been lost on her, but… well, trying to figure out what exactly it meant for someone to be Satan was a work in progress.  
  
“We need to find a way to get this demon to show themself so I can deal with them as quickly as possible. We don’t need anything up here murdering humans and giving me a bad name.”  
“…a worse name than Satan?”  
  
“…”  
  
“I mean,” Bailey said, “I’m pretty sure the ship has sailed on that one.”  
  
“You have a point. I just don’t like it.”  
  
Lucifer was silent for a bit, and Bailey thought she was thinking until she realized the Devil was just listening to see if she could still hear the angels in the main part of the store.  
  
“So,” Bailey said after a few minutes to break what had become an uncomfortably tense silence, “what is it you want me to do to help you catch this demon now?”  
  
“I was thinking,” Lucifer said, looking at her very seriously, “live bait.”  
  
Bailey just stared at her. “No. Hell no.”  
  
“Hear me out, Rebecca. You wouldn’t be in any actual danger. I’d be with you, of course.”  
  
“Consider my perspective. I almost got murdered and then literal Satan showed up, committed a triple homicide in front of me, and is now telling me more people want to murder me so he wants me to act as live bait so he can catch a demon.”  
  
“Yes, that’s about the size of it.”  
  
“You can see why I’m hesitant, right?”  
  
“You can be as hesitant as you want, but if you don’t do what I want you to in order to catch this demon, you’ll almost certainly die.”  
  
Bailey frowned. She was having a lot of feelings right then, but she didn’t have the wherewithal to process them all. She didn’t seem to have much of that in general lately, probably because of how chronically stressed out she was with everything going on in the world. The idea of being caught in yet another inescapable nightmare was exhausting.  
  
“I wish Michael was here,” she caught herself saying before she could really think about it. “No offense. He’s just…”  
  
“I know how Michael is, and I’m not offended. Like I said to Gabriel, he should be back around three. You’re welcome to stay here. It’ll make it easier to keep an eye on you.”  
  
“Right… I appreciate that.” Bailey thought for a moment, trying to picture the eagle-winged archangel working anywhere. The first thing she pictured him as was a lawyer and then a firefighter and then a Taco Bell employee, and then she tried to imagine him in a suit doing business and stock-market things. “Michael’s at work, right? What exactly does he do?”  
  
“What do you think he does?” Lucifer looked surprised. “He’s a doctor who works pro bono with low-income families. And then on the side he volunteers at the animal shelter. Because… you know.” Lucifer rolled her eyes. “He’s a fucking angel and unlike the two in the other room, he actually acts like it with all of his do-gooder pursuits.”  
  
“That’s… pretty darn angelic. Yeah.”  
  
“Anyway, I don’t want Gabriel and Raphael to bother him with their Satanic witch hunt bull shit. Michael’s been very understandably drained when he gets home from work, and I’d rather he just gets to relax and wind down. Those idiots need to just leave already.”  
  
Bailey was certain that wasn’t the only reason Lucifer wanted the two angels out of there. She wondered why Lucy didn’t just kick them out, but then she remembered what they had said about how Satan lost most of his power and had to rely upon tricks and skills. She figured that meant he couldn’t face the real angels head-on and thus didn’t want to risk a conflict.  
  
“I could ask them to leave,” Bailey said. “You know, make it a human kind of thing. Just say they need to leave because with the pandemic restrictions, your shop can only have four people in it at a time or something so their presence is keeping the customers out.”  
  
Lucifer’s eyes lit up at that. “That’s a thing? Like is that an actual thing?”  
  
“I mean… I don’t know the exact laws, but a lot of places have signs saying stuff like that. So, I figure why not make it your store’s policy too?”  
  
“And then we can keep the damn angels out! I like the way you think.”  
  
Bailey wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that Satan liked the way she thought, but she figured that was the least important thing going on.  
  
“You want me to go out there and tell them?”  
  
Lucifer shook her head. “No, I’ll do it. It’s my damned shop.”  
  
The Devil stood up and stretched as she walked out into the main part of the shop. Bailey waited a minute but then followed her and peeked out through the door. Lucy seemed like she was trying to be professional enough at first, although there was a lot of hostility between her and the angels. Eventually they left, and Lucifer looked relieved as she threw herself down on one of the couches and just sat back and stared at the ceiling for a while.  
  
“Coffee?” Bailey asked as she wandered out into the store.  
  
“You know where it is,” Lucy said, gesturing apathetically to the counter.  
  
“No, I was asking if you wanted any.”  
  
“Oh.” Lucy sat up straighter. “Yeah. I’ll take it black.”  
  
“Coming right up.” Bailey went and made two cups of coffee and brought one to the Devil before taking a seat in the oversized chair next to her. By this point, Lucifer had switched back to the more masculine form that was probably his default. His horns and tail were showing as they usually did when he was like this.  
  
“Hiding the horns and tail itches,” Lucifer explained as he took a long sip. “This is a relief like taking off a tie that’s too tight after a long day.”  
  
“I see.” Bailey wasn’t sure what to say to that. She had never thought about whether or not shapeshifting was comfortable. “And you don’t want to keep them out in barista form?”  
  
The Devil shrugged. “Sometimes a demon just wants to look more like themself. This is the form I’m in most often. It was my form even before the Fall, minus the horns and tail and plus wings, of course.”  
  
Lucifer sipped his coffee and just stared into space. He adjusted his glasses to compensate for the slight change in the shape of his face. Bailey took a moment to drink her coffee as well, all too aware of the situation she was in.  
  
“You’re a journalist, right?” said the Devil.  
  
“I am. More or less.” She didn’t feel like explaining that she wrote for a trashy tabloid.  
  
“Your type is always going around sticking your noses where they don’t belong, as evidenced by how I found you in the woods. You think any of your journalist pals might have information that could aid our search for the rogue demon?”  
  
“Huh.” Bailey thought it over for a moment. “Guess I could ask around and see if anyone has come across anything weird. “  
  
“All right,” said Lucifer. “It’s decided then. You go ask everyone you know for information about their experiences with demons, and then I’ll use you as live bait to capture our serial killer.”  
  
“Wait… wait… this plan really doesn’t seem great. I mean, I can’t just ask people if they’ve seen a demon.”  
  
“Why not?” Lucifer looked genuinely confused. “Everyone must know by now that the suspicion was always on a weird demon-worshipping cult, and the way I incinerated and arranged those bodies for the cops to find was very indicative that they were dealing with the occult.”  
  
“What do you mean the way you arranged the bodies?”  
  
“Well, they were all charred up and… seemed like a waste of perfectly good bodies to just dump them in a hole somewhere so I just carved a bunch of enochian words into them and then drew a big pentagram in the middle of Town Hall and arranged them around it. The pentagram was really just for show, of course. That doesn’t actually summon me or anything. I mean… nothing humans can do would actually summon me except calling my phone, and even then there’s like an eighty percent chance I won’t answer because I hate carrying the damn thing around and always forget it in my—wait, what were we talking about again?”  
  
“Um… the way you disposed of the bodies from last night’s triple homicide.”  
  
“Oh right, that. Basically, I was just letting the demon know I was on to them, and it’s overtly occult-oriented enough that it shouldn’t raise any red flags if you call your journalist friends and ask them if they know anything about weird cults or alleged demons.”  
  
Bailey took another long sip of her coffee.  
  
“I guess that makes sense. And… at this point, what do I have to lose?” She had already sold out her journalistic integrity when she wrote an article called ‘Toddler Mask Fashion Nightmares that Make Us Cringe.’ Not like she could sink any lower than that. At least investigating this story had a good reason and could stop a few homicidal nut jobs. “Sure, what the Hell. I’m gonna text some people now.”  
Lucifer grinned. “That’s the spirit!”


End file.
